PAY CUTS for teachers and other public servants have not been ruled out if the Croke Park agreement fails to deliver real savings, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has signalled.
Asked about the possibility of pay cuts – raised over the weekend by Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte – Mr Quinn said everyone realised tangible savings must be achieved under the deal.
He said discussions with the teachers’ unions ahead of the Easter conferences would be focusing on the necessity of Croke Park.
He was happy to co-operate with constructive proposals to achieve the necessary additional productivity and savings. But everyone realised what needed to be done.
The Croke Park deal promises no pay cuts and redundancies until 2014 in return for modernisation measures and productivity gains.
The Cabinet met last night to consider how savings might be achieved in each department.
Last week a Department of Finance briefing document expressed alarm at the slow pace of savings in the department. To date the agreement has managed to yield savings of €39 million. The briefing pointed out this represents less than half of 1 per cent of total education spending.
“Significant further savings must be targeted through real reform of work practices across the sector if the target of €379 million in further savings from new measures by 2014 is to be achieved.”
Pay and pensions accounts for close to 80 per cent of the €9 billion education budget. The department would like to cut a huge range of allowances paid to teachers but this may not be possible under the Croke Park deal.
Mr Quinn said yesterday: “The country is in a very difficult state, and we are not in control of our sovereignty. The reality is that on a fortnightly basis we have to meet the targets set by the EU-IMF and it is only when we meet these targets that the ECB will lend us money for the next fortnight which allows us to pay teachers, gardaí and other public servants.”
Asked about the proposed cull of Government quangos, Mr Quinn said he had "no preconceptions'' in relation to the dozen or so quangos in the education area. Last month an Irish Timessurvey showed average salaries of up to €70,000 per year in some of these quangos.
Last night the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation claimed the Croke Park agreement had given primary schools more than a million additional work hours per year at no extra cost to the State. The union said schools were fully implementing the agreement. “In effect, Croke Park is giving the State more than 1,000 teachers for no cost,” union general secretary Sheila Nunan said.