Thank you, Taoiseach. I call Deputy Michael Collins.

Deputy Bacik has to take a particular position.

The people of this country are looking on with disbelief. At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, the Government has approved a pay increase of approximately €118,000 for the CEO of Uisce Éireann, bringing his overall remuneration package to almost €392,000. That is more than €2,270 extra every week. That is a 43% increase. The CEO of ESB received a pay increase of almost €92,000, up 29% to €410,000 a year. Bord na Móna's CEO's pay rise of up to €75,000 brings his pay to €300,000. Dublin Bus's CEO pay rise of €60,000 brings it to €260,000. Meanwhile what did the nurse, special needs assistant, teacher, garda and firefighter get? The people on the front line of the country received a pay increase measured on around 1% while semi-State executives receive increases worth tens of thousands of taxpayers' euros. The firefighter who runs into every burning building when everyone else is running out, the nurse working throughout the night in an overcrowded emergency department, the special needs assistant helping a child with additional needs and the garda answering an emergency call are the people who keep Ireland functioning yet this Government tells them there are limits, that affordability matters and that the books have to balance but somehow there is always money available at the top.

Today, petrol costs almost €1.98 a litre, diesel is over €2.14 a litre and home heating oil is around €1.49 a litre. Families feel those costs every day. When they walk into the supermarket, the basics costs more and more. Bread, milk, butter, meat, vegetables and household essentials have all become expensive.

Working families, factory workers, farmers, fishermen, hauliers and pensioners are counting every euro before they fill the car, heat the house or buy the groceries yet while ordinary people are struggling with the cost of living, the Government signs off on a pay rise worth more than €2,200 a week for the head of Uisce Éireann. Which Minister looked at these figures and thought they represented value for money, while communities across the country are still dealing with water infrastructure failures, wastewater capacity problems and inadequate public services? In fact, the sewerage systems are collapsing into our rivers all over the country and Uisce Éireann's CEO gets rewarded with a €118,000 increase a year and is accountable to no one. What message does this send to the ordinary working people of Ireland? From where they are standing, it looks like there is one set of rules for hard-working families, home helps, carers, council workers and rural social scheme, RSS, workers and another set of rules entirely for those at the top. Can the Taoiseach explain to the people of middle Ireland why they are expected to tighten their belts while the Government rewards semi-State executives with pay increases greater than many workers earn in an entire year? Who signed off on this? Did the Taoiseach sign off on it? Did the Tánaiste sign off on it? Did the Independents supporting the Government know about these increases and support them? Who sanctioned these immoral and unpatriotic payments?

Prior to the work of the senior posts remuneration committee, SPRC, in 2025, there had been no systematic review of CEO pay in commercial State bodies since 2011. The issue had not been looked at since 2011 and it was creating issues comparable in terms of recruiting people for these bodies of a particular calibre, experience and expertise relative to what was happening in the private sector.

The Government agreed a framework for the remuneration of CEOs in commercial State bodies based on the findings of a report by the independent SPRC Therefore, an independent body was created and asked to look at this, independently and outside of Government, to ascertain what would be levels of pay for CEOs.

The Government only accepted the findings of the report in part, limiting pay to the market mean of comparable roles. We did not take on board the full recommendations of this independent committee. The Government agreed the introduction of a banded salary structure for CEOs, ranging from their current salary to the market median of the relevant band.

Basically, the report said that we need to have fair, appropriate remuneration as a key element in the recruitment and retention of CEOs of commercial State bodies, which are critical to the State’s future development and economic performance. These are enormous organisations now, with huge budgets, huge turnover and very significant projects under their remit. Over the next five to six years, in particular, Uisce Éireann and ESB - you name them - will be overseeing very substantial investment, delivering very significant projects and managing the funding and financing of those.

That is the issue. The easier, populist political position would be to do nothing, but that in itself would not serve the State either, if the truth be told. We could enter into an era of complete mediocrity in terms of how commercial State bodies would be administered, governed and dealt with. The Government did not come up with these increases itself and it did not decide on them. Ultimately, a decision has to be made in terms of approving them, but the work was done independently of the Government and independently of the relevant Ministers, on balance. That is the background to it.

More broadly, we have systems in terms of the public service and we have national pay agreements. What should happen here is that there should be annual increases, in my view, linked to inflation and so on. It should not have to wait for another decade or decade and a half before an area like this gets reviewed.

The Taoiseach said that independent bodies outside of the Government made a decision and the Government accepted that in part. Is the Taoiseach saying the Government accepted these increases? The Taoiseach is saying that the other side here is saying we should do nothing. I do not agree with that. Everybody deserves an increase, but an increase of €118,000 a year is outrageous. The people of Ireland deserve accountability. They deserve answers. I am not getting them here. What does the Taosieach think these immoral increases to the CEOs of Uisce Éireann, ESB, Bord na Móna and Dublin Bus mean to every hard-working taxpayer in Ireland, to every person on a pension who cannot afford to put home heating oil in the tank, to all those who have disabilities, to those 350,000 who cannot pay their electricity bills and to the highest number of people ever in this country who cannot pay their mortgages? I will tell him what it means. It was simply put to me by a tax-paying woman last night:

If you're not at the top in this country, the only way it pays to exist is to stay in bed. This is no longer a country for the hard-working man and woman.

Again, I ask: was it the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Independents supporting this Government who signed off on this shocking deal for those at the very top?

I would make the overall point that it was decided independently to assess the post, the office or the position, not any individual, because individuals come and go, but for the position at the head of a given commercial State body, what would be a fair increase. The Deputy said there should be increases. This had not been looked at since 2011. In my view, that should not happen again. It should be looked at far more regularly than it has been. We have reduced. By the way, people on higher incomes will pay far more in higher tax, and that is right. We have a very progressive tax system in this country, which is one of the most progressive in Europe, where those on higher incomes get taxed far more than those on middle and low incomes. That is the way it should be, and it will continue that way. We have also done a lot on the cost of living, by the way. Over the past five years in particular, we have intervened significantly every year to try to protect people, including working people. In next year's budget, we have reduced income tax, we have now reduced childcare costs and we have brought in a new cost-of-disability payment. We have taken a lot of measures on the cost-of-living side.