A firefighter and a teacher
Richard Kelly
Secretary of the National Retained Firefighters Association, which has members who are part-timers within the fire service and have no fixed hours per week with guaranteed pay.
Not only do they want to cut the core pay but they’re cutting the time they’re paying it on. We don’t have core pay, we are the retained service. You are on the pager, you get a small retaining fee and that’s it. That’s your only guaranteed income. Every retained fire station in the country does two hours a week, they are guaranteed that, it’s a training night. They go in and check the equipment and do some training to make sure they are up to date and that’s the only set hours that you are guaranteed. That’s all there is on top of the guaranteed annual retainer of €8,000.
Anyone on a mortgage the last number of years is not going to be able to pay it.
You can’t look after your family and pay your household bills. Hand on heart, these charges coming down the line, property tax and water charges I don’t know where they think we are going to get the money because we haven’t the money to survive.
I know fellas who are getting help from St Vincent de Paul. This is reality, lads going constantly to the bank to get different deals on the mortgage and all that.
The Government own the banks so why can’t the banks just freeze mortgages until people get back on their feet?
We are at breaking point after Croke Park 1 but we were promised that would be it and that the deal would at least last until June 2014 before a new one came in and here we are re-dealing and rejigging.
Eamon Gilmore was on the radio saying this time this would be it and he was encouraging us not to oppose this.
But this was all said before and I find it hard to believe from a Labour Government.”
Ann McMahon
Is the principal of a three-teacher school in Rathkeale, Co Limerick, which has an enrolment of between 63 and 115 pupils. The number fluctuates because of the large numbers of Travellers who send their children there and then move on during the year. She has been a teacher for 35 years.
I’m reserving my full-on reaction until I see the document, but at this stage I’m looking at a 5.5 per cent hit and I’ve taken three hits already. This is the fourth and I’m trying to see how it works out financially.
I didn’t have any issue with our union officials staying in the talks until the end but my sense of it is – you sit down and do your budget, you pay your mortgage and utilities, health insurance, the expenses associated with schools and college and then you look at what’s left. That’s where the clawback happens.
There might be some out there who say the public workers are just creaming it, but with all the hits I’ve taken it’s the local economy that has suffered in my area.
As well as that, the little that’s left, we’re saving it because we have other things coming down the line like property tax and water taxes. In rural areas there will be septic tank charges.
If you visit middle and rural Ireland you’ll see many business, the discretionary spend businesses struggling.
People who retired in the last couple of years would say that it was benchmarking and the tax breaks that made the difference to them. Now all the benefits – that’s all gone now.
They’ve got that back and as well as that the tax has increased.
We’ve lost 30 per cent of our staff in the last two years, we have taken a funding hit and we watch parents and it is a struggle. Most principals are conscientious of any costs they have to ask a parent for.