Croke Park plans 'face review'

The chairman of the body charged with implementing the Croke Park agreement on public service pay and reform today said Government departments have submitted action plans that are being reviewed.

However, PJ Fitzpatrick said figures included in the action plans will most likely have to be reviewed due to the upcoming budget.

Mr Fitzpatrick also admitted the action plans do not contain figures on possible redundancies.

The implementation body was established earlier this year with Mr Fitzpatrick, the former head of the Courts Service, being appointed as chairman in September.

Under the Croke Park agreement, negotiated in March, it was agreed the Government has guaranteed there will be no further pay cuts for public service staff and that compulsory redundancies will not be introduced at least until 2014.

The deal also includes a mechanism for possibly reversing part or all of the pay cuts introduced over the last year or so. In return for these guarantees, trade unions have agreed to co-operate on the introduction of wide-ranging cost-saving reforms including redeployment of staff.

Speaking on RTÉ radio at lunchtime, Mr Fitzpatrick said the implementation body had received plans from departments that include proposals for efficiencies and savings anticipated by the Croke Park deal.

"There's no doubt these have been prepared in the context of the budgets that the departments and agencies have at this time. I think everybody knows that the funding available and the staffing available to departments, agencies and sectors is going to be different following the budget," said Mr Fitzpatrick.

"The action plans will obviously have to be revisited by departments and agencies when they know precisely what the budget decisions are both in terms of the funding available and the numbers," he added.

Mr Fitzpatrick said those proposals were being considered. "The action plans will have to be verifiable . . . will have to withstand public scrutiny. I don't think anybody, whether on the management side or the trade union side, is under any illusion about the scale of the challenge," he said.

However, Mr Fitzpatrick admitted the action plans received by the implementation body did not include estimates regarding reductions in staff numbers.

"The numbers will be coming. The reporting will be starting very early in the new year, and the numbers will be required," he said.

The body's chairman said between 11,000 and 13,000 jobs had gone from the public sector for areas that are exempt from the recruitment embargo since March 2009 and that staff reduction would increase.

"The employment levels that have been set for departments and agencies at the moment, and that may well change in the weeks ahead, will reduce the numbers working in the public service to 306,800.

"That would bring the number up to the order of 14,000 or thereabouts in total. But that number may change and may well become more challenging with the budget," he said.

"There are already departments and organisations having to do more with less. Already they are having to introduce more flexibility so as to maintain services with less money and less people. Departments and agencies are maintaining their outputs with less money, and to do that they've had to improve their efficiencies and productivity and so on," Mr Fitzpatrick added.

In its latest quarterly economic forecast, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) endorsed the suggestion from the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions David Begg that the Government should extend to 2016 the period over which it attempts to reduce the deficit.

Dr Alan Barrett of the ESRI told a press briefing yesterday it would be "very hard to see the Croke Park deal surviving," given the Government's commitment to achieving the 3 per cent per target in 2014.