Government performance and Defence Forces pay
A back-and-forth followed on Government responsibility, public sector pay and Defence Forces conditions, with both sides trading political jibes. The Leader insisted the Defence Forces should not be used as political pawns and said further debates and pay restoration measures were underway.
Fine Gael is eight years in government now. It has to be responsible.
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Fianna Fáil is now travelling the road of promising all things to all people and if that is the way it wants to behave, let us go to the country and have an election.
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Look to the future. That is what we are saying. We all need to work together.
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I know that Senator Ned O'Sullivan is getting ready to hit the road himself and I know that he was very close to the leader of Fianna Fáil, Deputy Micheál Martin, when they gathered in Malahide. I worked well with the Senator on the Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, however. Let us put things in context. If we want to have a real political debate, let us have it.
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One cannot just keep promising and then not deliver. That is what Fine Gael has done.
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I remind members of Fianna Fáil that we have had a number of debates in this House on the Defence Forces and we will have them again. Senators McFadden, Craughwell and Wilson also have raised these matters here on the Order of Business. I ask Senator Murnane O'Connor to put things in context. The public sector pay agreement from 2018 to 2020 provides for further increases in pay ranging from 6.2% to 7.4% over the lifetime of the agreement. The first increase was due on 1 January 2018 and has been paid to Defence Forces personnel. A second increase is due on 1 October. By the end of the current public sector pay agreement, the pay of all public servants earning under €70,000 per annum, including members of the Defence Forces, will be restored to pre-financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, levels. It was Senator Murnane O'Connor's party that brought forward the FEMPI legislation when it was in government. The Senator cannot have it every way. Does she want to come over here to give the reply?
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Senator McFadden said today that the Government needed to step up. I listened to her speaking and she said she was not happy. She said that the Minister needed to step up and was not doing what he said he would do. That is coming from one of Fine Gael's own Senators. I heard her today in the Chamber.