State withholds pay rise from trainee gardaí in industrial row

Nearly 100 trainee gardaí will not receive a €2,000 pay increment from this weekend due to the stand-off between the Government and their representative body, over the Lansdowne Road agreement.

The Government has withheld incremental pay rises due to members of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) and the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI), as both have rejected the pay accord.

The financial penalties came into effect at the beginning of July but the trainee gardaí are understood to be the largest group to be affected to date.

The Department of Justice said 97 trainee gardaí were attested on July 23rd, 2015, and were due to receive increments from today, under which they would move from the first point on the pay scale of €23,750 to €25,727.

But the department said this pay rise is being withheld as the GRA is outside of the Lansdowne Road accord.

Under financial emergency legislation, increments for members of groups deemed to have repudiated an agreement can be frozen until 2018.

Minster for Justice Frances Fitzgerald told The Irish Times the Government's door is open for the GRA to return to talks on the deal.

“I believe we have a package on the table that I hope would encourage members,” she said.

She acknowledged gardaí are “very, very unhappy about the level of pay reduction they have taken, particularly because of the overtime that was there before, and people base their expectations and mortgages and everything else on that”.

She hoped a combination of government offers to gardaí and investment in policing would encourage them to accept the Lansdowne Road deal which she said could help the State “move on to a new era with policing”.

Ms Fitzgerald said forfeiture of an incremental pay rise would not “improve the mood of people”.

“Nobody wants to lose an increment and there are a lot of guards who will be affected and all the more reason to come in (to the Lansdowne Road deal) because the increments are held.”

Pay review

Some of the main concerns of gardaí in rejecting the Lansdowne Road accord was that a pay review promised originally – under the previous Haddington Road agreement – had not taken place.

Gardaí were also angry at a controversial two-tier pay remuneration structure which, in effect, came into force for new entrants following the abolition of rent allowances for new Garda recruits in 2012.

The pay review process is now underway again.

Government sources previously said new entrant gardaí could receive about €4,000 in restored allowances by November, if the GRA agreed to enter into the Lansdowne Road deal.

Sources also said there would be reforms to the use of additional hours which gardaí have been obliged to work, under the deal before the Haddington Road deal.

Earlier this week, GRA members protested over the financial penalties and called on the Government to postpone the imposition of FEMPI (Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) legislation until the Haddington Road deal is completed.