Garda pay deal `hasn't been finalised'

The pay deal for rank and file gardai may not be finalised until next week, according to the vice-president of the Garda Representative Association .

Speaking after a day when both sides in the pay talks held separate meetings, Mr Michael Kirby described reports that the deal would be rejected as speculative. "The deal hasn't been finalised, so we don't know how people will react. We'd hope realistically to be ready early next week."

The 28-member GRA central executive committee is scheduled to meet next Wednesday. However, a meeting could be convened earlier to vote on whether to recommend the pay increase to members.

The current round of talks on the 9 per cent offer has already overrun by a week, with last Friday scheduled as the original deadline for agreement.

Mr Kirby said the GRA would look at methods of speeding up a postal ballot of members as soon as the deal was agreed. Asked if this could mean the Tour de France could be disrupted if the majority of the 8,500 gardai rejected the deal, he said, "there's nothing off the agenda as of yet."

The GRA negotiators have not officially stated whether they have accepted the 9 per cent offer in principle. "We're at the nittygritty stage," Mr Kirby said. "But some of those nitty-gritty details could be quite fundamental to us." The GRA negotiators spent yesterday doing their own costings on the deal agreed so far, he said. Gardai will also receive a 4.75 per cent increase under the Partnership 2000 Agreement if they accept the current offer, bringing the total to 13.75 per cent.

On Tuesday, the GRA president, Mr John Healy, who had just returned from holidays, said the acceptance of the deal would "depend on whether there are strings attached."