Benchmark deal hinges on national agreement, says Ahern

The recommendations of the current public service benchmarking body may not be implemented by the Government in the event of the new national pay agreement being rejected by union members.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said yesterday that if the new "Towards 2016" national agreement was not ratified, the Government would have to negotiate a separate deal for the public sector.

In a statement last night, a Government spokesman said that in the event of the national pay agreement not being accepted, that the current benchmarking body would complete its work. However, the Government statement maintained that "any action on foot of it would have to be considered in the context of the public service pay arrangements generally at that time".

Any decision not to implement the recommendations of the benchmarking body would send a major shock through the industrial relations framework and would create uncertainty about pay increases for public servants.

Mr Ahern yesterday described the new "Towards 2016" deal as "a good agreement". He expressed confidence that the 10 per cent wage increases set out in the deal would outstrip the level of headline inflation over its 27-month lifespan and said the Government would "work on the basis that this agreement would be passed".

However, asked in an interview on RTÉ's This Week programme yesterday whether, if the deal was rejected, he would tell the public sector unions that everything was off the table including benchmarking, Mr Ahern replied that if the deal was not ratified the Government would have to negotiate its own agreement with public sector workers. Such an agreement would not automatically contain all the provisions of the national pay deal.

"We would have to, independently, as a Government and an employer, negotiate a public sector agreement and we would do that. Obviously in that we wouldn't then be looking at the broad issues of the entire economy, we would then be raising issues, which I am sure we would be in benchmarking anyway, of reform and change," he said.

"It would not be automatic as it is in this agreement. We would have to independently negotiate a separate agreement with the public sector unions," he said.

The new public service benchmarking body, established by the Government in January, is expected to report by the end of next year. Mr Ahern said it was "unfortunate" that the second level teaching unions had decided to recommend rejection of the deal. However, he said it was good to see that the trade union Impact had backed it.

On Saturday, the central executive of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland voted unanimously to recommend that its 17,000 members reject the agreement in a forthcoming ballot. The move follows a similar decision by the executive of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) in the past 10 days, and is seen as a reaction by teachers to what they feel are inadequate pay rises and insufficient commitments to additional resources for the sector. Mr Ahern said he did not believe that the unions would have secured what they have secured if there were no national agreements. He believed headline inflation would be "far less" than the 10 per cent pay increases provided for in the new agreement.

He said that the projections were that headline inflation "could go a bit higher than it is presently and then should ease back considerably next year. "Most of the inflation that has made up the increases in headline inflation have been around the energy area, when that is stripped out of it, it is around 2 or 2½ per cent," the Taoiseach stated.