‘Fire brigade legislation targets public servants’

THE pension levy is “fire brigade legislation” that will hammer public servants, Fine Gael said last night.

Speaking during a Dáil debate on the legislation that will give effect to the levy, Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan said it was being introduced because the Government had mismanaged the economy in recent years and now had to raise cash.

“We now have fire brigade legislation that is attempting to deal with issues that were not dealt with over the past six or seven years,” he said. “The public are now being hammered and must take a punishment beating for the inadequacies of the Government… The public service is taking the punishment beating in the first instance.”

Labour TD Michael D Higgins said the bill for the economic mess was “being passed on to some of those who have the least capacity to pay”.

While this was happening, the bulk of the boards of the country’s banks were still in place, despite their contribution to the economic crisis, he said.

“We do not see any suggestion that there will be a sweep across the boards of institutions that have done such damage to Ireland and its future,” he said.

But Finance Minister Brian Lenihan defended the levy. He said the private sector had been hit badly by the economic crisis and the public sector had to share the burden.

“Redundancies have stalked this land”, he said, and in that context Mr Lenihan asked those in “secure pensionable employment” to make a contribution.

Junior minister at the Department of Finance, Martin Mansergh, also defended the levy.

“If we were to withdraw this bill or vote it down, as many are demanding, we would risk such an erosion of confidence that our economic destiny, for the first time since independence in 1922, very likely would be taken out of our hands,” Mr Mansergh said.

The pension levy will effectively be a pay cut. Under the levy, public servants already making contributions to their pensions will now make extra payments — thereby lowering the cost to the Government. This includes ministers and TDs.

“What is contained in this bill, is in effect benchmarking in reverse,” said Mr Mansergh.