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2009

‘Gagged’ PDFORRA calls on Alliance to speak out for all those providing essential services to public

Date Released: 12 Oct 2009

PDFORRA sent a letter to the South-East regional meeting of the 24/7 Frontline Services Alliance this evening in Kilkenny. The organisation has been told it cannot participate in the Alliance campaign to oppose cuts in front line services or speak at its meetings. However in the letter, PDFORRA General Secretary Gerry Rooney states that it will continue to support the objectives of the other front line unions.

‘The campaign has set out to tell the truth about the contribution of front line service workers and the extremely difficult and challenging jobs they undertake on behalf of the people of Ireland, both at home and overseas’, Mr. Rooney wrote.

‘Front line service workers in the public service have experienced a wage cut of 7.5 per cent through the unilateral imposition of the pension levy – and have paid the increased taxes that all PAYE workers have had to take this year. Front line service workers have paid their fair share and must not be asked to dig deeper as so many are experiencing personal financial hardship.

‘It is important that the decision makers and opinion formers are aware of the risks that Guards, Nurses, Fire Fighters, Soldiers and Prison Officers take on behalf of the people of Ireland. They endure the risk of assault, death, injury and ill health – and this risk is taken on a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year basis. PDFORRA supports you in your efforts to deliver this message and ensure that front line service workers are treated fairly.’

He told the Alliance affiliates that, ‘The speculators, property developers and bankers are the ones who have wreaked havoc with Ireland’s economy and they should be the ones who pay most towards its recovery’.The Deputy General Secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association, Seamus Murphy, told the meeting that, “In the week in which the Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue indicated that he would step down after the storm about his lavish expenses there was little danger that any nurses would find themselves in a similar position.

“However, nurses may decide to step down if threats to reduce or withdraw payments for unsocial hours such as nights, bank holidays, Sundays, Christmas Day and News Year’s Eve are implemented by the Government on foot of the McCarthy report.” He singled out Martin Cullen, the Waterford based Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, for “stoutly defending” his Cabinet colleagues’ extravagance, “yet he remains silent on the same Government’s threat to Frontline Services.

“The 24/7 Alliance represents modestly paid frontline workers and any attempt to further pauperise its membership will be resisted.”The President of the Garda Representative Association, Michael O’Boyce, told the meeting that, “Public sector workers have been victims of an unrelenting propaganda onslaught, the purpose of which is to demonise and dehumanise public servants; to portray us as a faceless, self-serving, overpaid and underworked entity. The 24/7 Frontline Services Alliance came together to give a human face to public sector workers. The Government has tried to divide workers; pitching the private sector against the public sector. Their motive is to deflect attention away from those who by their mismanagement, greed and speculative excesses brought our country to the brink of ruin.”

The Alliance would not passively accept cuts to the services and would “challenge the falsehoods that are used against us. We will say to the radio presenters - who fought so hard and for so long to keep their salaries a secret - if tomorrow you were not at work life would go on as normal and very few would notice. But if any one of the professions represented here tonight were not at work tomorrow morning everyone would notice. The country would shudder to a halt. Frontline jobs never switch off.”

He criticised the Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, for trying to suppress PDFORRA and said there was a vacant chair on the platform for PDFORRA. However that organisation had not lost its voice because “each one of us here tonight is the voice of PDFORRA. Sometimes silence can be deafening and I applaud the delegates at the PDFORRA conference last week who let the Minister know exactly what they though of his disgraceful actions.

SIPTU National Nursing Official Louise O’Reilly said, “It is apparent that we are having an impact. The Tánaiste has already had another look at the McCarthy report and she, like us, can see that it doesn’t make sense!

“It is clear now that this Government understands that we are taking its threats to pay and services seriously and that it is facing a sustained campaign of resistance from frontline public service workers who will take no more.  The huge turn out from SIPTU members in a large number of grades including nursing, fire fighters, care workers, ambulance personnel and others has given the Government an indication of the depth of feeling among its employees.

“We will be urging our members to come out and support the ICTU day of protest on November 6th, and join with workers from the public and private sectors in defence of wages and public services.”

The Deputy General Secretary of the Prison Officers Association, Eugene Dennehy, said, “IBEC, which represents the big guys, want us to engage with Government. We have tried to engage with Government since last March and have not been heard. Communication with Government has become one was traffic. They have threatened us and expect us to lie down and capitulate. This cannot and must not happen.”

He described the meeting with Irish Congress of Trade Union’s President Jack O’Connor, General Secretary David Begg and Vice President Patricia King in Tralee last week as “reassuring and important. All of us are of the view that if public service pay is pushed down workers in the private sector will be the next target.” Instead of cutting pay “the Government might look at the 111 tax breaks that benefit the wealthy”.

The General Secretary of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, Joe Dirwan, said that for the first time in his career he was encountering members of the force who were experiencing serious financial distress. His own members had suffered a 12 per cent cut in pay since the Budget and 800 of them would have left the Garda Siochana by the end of the year.

He said the McCarthy report could not be described as independent as it had based all of its findings on information supplied by the Department of Finance. There had been no input from staff and especially from frontline staff in relation to the effects the proposed cuts in pay and conditions would have on services.

“Forty per cent of rank and file gardai have less than five years service and 60 per cent less than 60 per cent. We need the experienced people we are losing and we need to be aware of the intense pressures that younger members of the force are under financially. They did not benefit from the boom but they inherited the negative equity it created, as well as paying pension, health and income levies to help the Government bail out the banks”.

The Deputy General Secretary of the Irish Nurses’ Organisation David Hughes, said that, “People should be wary of commentators shedding crocodile tears for the tax payer. Many of them are simply diverting attention from their own class whop pay as little tax as possible on unearned income and none on their amassed wealth.

“There can be no divide between private and public sector workers, who pay income tax on everything they earn through the PAYE system, which constitutes 80 per cent of all direct taxes. Public servants, although only comprising16 per cent of the workforce, pay 31 per cent of PAYE - and that’s without taking account of the pension levy.”





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