Sir, – Your editorial "Public sector pay – a test of ministerial mettle" (September 6th) in its general recommendation of public sector pay moderation does not pay sufficient attention to the wider context, the levels of hardship faced by lower-paid workers and the unequal treatment of different sectors of society during austerity.
The troika bluntly recommended that the Irish legal profession, a bastion of privilege and high costs, be opened up to competition to reduce charges, exactly as it proposed cutting public sector wages.
In the end, the public sector went through several pay cuts, while nothing was done to reform the legal sector, and the legal services Bill that was finally drawn up was completely emasculated.
Similarly, the Government refused to tackle the upward-only rent reviews that were crippling Irish business during the crash out of deference to the law of contract. Nonetheless it has successively renewed the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Fempi) legislation, including this year, to enable it to continue breaking the contracts of employment of its own workforce.
Furthermore, there was no Lansdowne Road “agreement” to be “widely accepted”. This arrangement, like Croke Park and Haddington Road before it, is a diktat backed by legal force; accept it or a worse set of conditions will be imposed on you. It is a quite successful bit of spin that the word “agreement” can be tagged onto a diktat, but it is about as accurate as calling a mugging at knife-point a negotiated financial transfer.
It is strange that “maintaining international competitiveness” always requires keeping wages down for low-paid workers, but is the justification for Nama paying large salaries to bankrupt developers and failed banks justifying huge rewards for senior executives.
The constant introduction of high charges not related to ability to pay, including property tax, water taxes and refuse charges, and the failure to control costs such as motor insurance, imposed by Government but not managed by it, have eroded real income. This is particularly felt by lower-paid public sector workers and is hardly surprising that they are now trying to recover some of their standard of living. – Yours, etc,
DONAL McGRATH,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.