Croke Park 2 negotiations require realism – as €300 million savings must be achieved

Fine Gael TD for Dublin South, Olivia Mitchell has urged public sector unions to work constructively with the LRC in an effort to form an agreement on how savings of €300 million can be made on public sector pay and pensions. Deputy Mitchell was speaking during Private Members Business on the Croke Park 2 agreement.

“It would be tragic if the failure to agree Croke Park 2, just when we are on the cusp of recovery, were to jeopardise it all and devalue all the sacrifices that have been made by every section of Irish society over the last five years.

“I appreciate that we all have had enough of budgetary adjustments and that we all feel hard done by. However the people who have been most hard done by are those who have lost their jobs, pensions and savings, and older people who will probably never work again and the young people who have had to emigrate. While I acknowledge the contribution already made by public servants to our economic recovery I do not believe they have taken the biggest hit.

“Public sector jobs are secure, as are their pensions which are funded by the rest of the working population. They also have the right to strike, something which isn’t available either to those who have lost their jobs or to those in the private sector where such an action could affect the viability of the businesses employing them.

“I believe the Government is correct in exploring the potential for agreement. But we have to be quite clear. Croke Park 2 negotiations were never about the right to reject or accept the €300 million payroll cut. That decision has already been made and validly voted on in Budget 2013. All Croke Park 2 was about was how these savings might be made. But made they must be, one way or another. I urge the public sector unions to engage constructively with Labour Relations Committee in the interest of the national economic recovery.

“The choice before us is stark: we either cut our cloth now, or we continue borrowing and ask our children and our children’s children to pay even more dearly in the future.”