Most of them upheld.

They got grants.

The Government is wrecking the industry as it is.

This is just propaganda.

Big money and big interests are involved in this.

Methinks the Taoiseach does protest too much.

That is what the Taoiseach is doing.

It is not agreed.

It is not agreed. I will not waste the House's time with another vote as people will want to get on with other business but we had a discussion about the length of time that would be made available for the debates on Covid and on the winter plan. A number of members of the Business Committee made it clear that we wanted a slot of two hours and ten minutes for each debate and that we wanted each debate to be taken separately. The times have been reduced back to one hour and 45 minutes each which means that, yet agai…

I am sorry; I meant to say the slots should be 210 minutes long rather than 1 hour and 45 minutes.

I am sorry; I meant 210 minutes as against one hour and 45 minutes.

I do not agree but I will not call a vote.

On what planet is it okay for politicians earning extraordinarily high salaries - €96,000 in the case of Deputies - to get a pay increase when hundreds of thousands of workers have seen their incomes decimated or jobs completely eliminated as a result of Covid-19 and the measures the Government has imposed, and when the Government has cut the pandemic unemployment payments of many thousands? How can the Minister possibly justify a pay rise for politicians when huge numbers of working people are seeing their incomes…

The Covid emergency did not stop the Minister from giving a €16,000 increase to the super junior Ministers, which is absolutely outrageous. The ordinary public servants who were robbed to pay for the bailout of the banks should get their pay restored. Indeed, it should have been restored long before now but the idea that politicians on extraordinarily handsome salaries of €96,000 should get a pay rise at the very same time that the Government is cutting the PUP for people who have lost their jobs and seen their inc…

Within People Before Profit our policy is that politicians should be paid the average industrial wage and that is what happens internally. That means we are in the same position as the people we represent and have a vested interest in representing the collective and not just looking after ourselves. That is our policy. In the case of the 2%, we will be handing it back to the Exchequer because we think it is unconscionable in the current situation to take any pay rise, although, frankly, it hurts me to think we are …

We are saying we should cut the pay of politicians. What we are doing with the 2% is that we are not taking it, but we do not think it should be a choice for the politicians to take it. In terms of the average industrial wage, we use that money as we pledged in our election manifesto in a very clear way. We pledged that we would take the average industrial wage, so I have not benefited one cent personally from any pay increase that other politicians have all benefited from in the context of their already high salar…

It is the same question.

If the question is whether we should have a democratic discussion in this House about politicians' pay, where the public can listen in and, indeed, exercise influence on us about what the pay levels should be, then, yes, I think that would be preferable. If the public had a say in it, they would say that we are paid far too much and that it would be much better if our pay was linked to the average pay of working people because then we would be representing everybody, not just the well paid.

The Minister does not seem to get the point. I was on the picket line with Debenhams workers the other day. They were sickened at the thought that people in this House were going to get a pay increase when their pandemic unemployment payments were going to be cut by those very people. Does the Minister understand why they would be sickened about a situation where they have been abandoned, where the Government has let them down and where people who have worked for decades have just been dumped on the scrapheap? The …

I have already put forward a proposal, as have others.