Madam, – As a retired Irish public service worker, I wish to ask an urgent question of my serving and retired colleagues. But first, let me ask this: why do they think the Government decided to cut the pay but not the pensions of public service workers in the recent Budget? It has repeatedly stated that it needs the money and that public service pensions are too high. Is this uncharacteristic generosity? It is not! It is a ploy learned from Margaret Thatcher. It is a cleverly disguised attempt to break the “pension parity” between serving and retired public service workers. In England, in the years after this link was successfully broken the government found financial “reasons” to gradually, systematically reduce public service pensions until retired public service workers were the “new poor.”
Leaving public service pensions intact, for now, seems so palatable that retired public service workers may accept this. But now let me ask them the urgent question: which would they would prefer – that our future pension depend on the whim of Government or on agreement secured by serving public service workers? And what are we going to do about this? – Yours, etc,