Seanad report: Public representatives should give their views on the "grasping, greedy selfishness" articulated by the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation (Ibec) in the current social partnership talks, Joe O'Toole (Ind) said.
A former president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr O'Toole said that at a time when house price inflation was exceeding 10 per cent annually, chief executive officers and company directors were getting pay increases of over 20 per cent, and the economy was still growing at an unprecedented pace, Ibec wanted to confine workers driving the economy to low, single-figure wage rises over the coming years.
Elected representatives should say clearly that they knew Ibec did not want to pay the workers on the ground and did not want more Government spending on services. Effectively, what the employers' body wanted to do, with all the gain and all the profits, was simply to "trouser it. When they talk about competitiveness what they are really talking about is trousering the gains of the wealth of society. It's time that we told them we won't put up with this."
Shane Ross (Ind) said the House had surrendered a great deal of its power and influence in recent years by allowing talks on social partnership to go on with no input from the Oireachtas whatever. He agreed with Mr O'Toole when he picked out the "fat cats", mostly in the banks, who had rewarded themselves with vast sums of money while others had not had such lucrative sums. Mr O'Toole was correct in identifying Ibec as culprits.
Mr Ross said it was disturbing that the two main parties in the current talks process were supposed to represent business and employees while in reality Ibec represented fat cats in business and the unions spoke for at best only a third of the work force. Yet these people were making decisions for the whole nation.
House leader Mary O'Rourke described as "an excellent idea" a suggestion by Michael Finucane, acting Fine Gael leader in the House, that students be enlisted during the summer months to compile an accurate electoral register. Innovative thinking was necessary to get the register updated, Mr Finucane had said.