Public sector pay body to meet Minister as work begins

The Public Sector Pay Commission is to meet the Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe next week as the body’s examination of the case for pay restoration for public servants gets under way.

The commission has met once so far and a further three meetings are scheduled for the coming weeks, according to a department spokesman.

The commission is staffed by a secretariat of five civil servants and has started the process of recruiting additional staff.

The body is charged with examining public sector pay and how the pay cuts imposed on public servants might be reversed. However, it will also report on pay rates in the public sector as compared to the private sector, and compared to public service pay in other countries.

The commission must also take account of security and pensions, as well as any difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff.

Some Government sources believe the commission will be undermined if the Coalition agrees to enter early pay talks with the trade unions, as the unions are demanding. However, other sources say that the commission’s work will proceed regardless and could feed into talks next year.

The deadline for its report is June of next year, though the commission could be asked to make an initial report before that.

Members of the commission contacted by The Irish Times yesterday did not wish to comment on its work.

One member said that the commission had not arrived at any decisions about its work programme, “but I’m not sure I’m allowed to say anything about that”.

New process

Trade union and official sources expect that in the coming weeks the Government will invite the public sector unions to begin a new process to replace, extend or review the Lansdowne Road Agreement, with talks beginning in the early months of next year.

Unions who are inside the agreement have been incensed by the recommendations of the Labour Court that gardaí should get an extra €3,000 a year from next January. They have emphasised to Ministers that it has exposed them to criticism from their memberships, and they now expect the Government to offer a new process that will result in pay rises for their members.

However, the Government continues to insist that its budgetary ceilings are set for next year and cannot be altered. General pay increases for public servants could only come at a cost to services, Government sources say.

One senior figure said that extension of similar concessions to all public servants would be “unthinkable”. The likely cost could run to several hundred million euros.

The Government is now seeking to create space for the commission to do its work, and for a process with the trade unions to begin over the coming months. However, pressure from the trade unions is likely to escalate up to and including strikes unless a there is clear path to early pay restoration, according to union sources.

Meanwhile, the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin yesterday told the Small Firms Association that the demands for pay increases represented “a defining moment for Ireland”.

Mr Martin said early pay rises for public servants “would require more borrowing, less investment and a chasing of tails, which we all know could end up with the need for another round of forced cuts”.

“We need to step back before the pay situation gets out of hand. Surely after what we have just been through, an angry, relativities-driven escalation of industrial disputes is the last thing we need,” he added.