Call for rethink on monthly pay

THE TRADE union representing middle-grade civil servants has called on the Government to reconsider plans to pay staff on a monthly rather than a fortnightly basis.

The general secretary of the Public Service Executive Union, Tom Geraghty, said his members had been the first to ratify the Croke Park agreement and were staunch defenders of the deal.

However, he said he was asking the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to look again at the management proposal to move staff to monthly pay.

He told the conference the change being proposed was “of very little significance in its own right”.

Mr Geraghty said he was no expert on payroll systems but it seemed to him that the vast bulk of the costs involved were in processing and administration rather than the number of times a button was pressed to transmit money to the banks.

“Therefore we are at a loss to understand what savings could possibly be involved in moving people to monthly pay.”

Mr Geraghty said he was asking the Government to reconsider its plans in this area in the context of public service staff who had already experienced two pay cuts and were having to deal with higher taxes and charges like all other citizens. He said genuinely there were a lot of people struggling to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, the conference backed a call from its branch in the Revenue Commissioners that the union’s incoming executive committee lodge a claim for scheduled, regular and recurring overtime to be considered for the calculation of pension entitlements.

The branch said the pensions ombudsman had recently made a determination in relation to overtime worked by ambulance personnel in north Dublin.

The union’s deputy general secretary Billy Hannigan told the conference such a move would be “a huge ask” in the light of other motions at the conference which called on the union to hang on to existing pension arrangements rather than seek new ones.