Public servants ‘attacked’ during crisis entitled to restored pay - INMO

Public servants “attacked” during the economic crisis are entitled to early pay restoration, the head of the nursing union has said.

Liam Doran general secretary of Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, said comments from Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe on pay restoration are "very disappointing."

Earlier this month Pashchal Donohoe said that the Lansdowne Road agreement is “the only game in town” and there was no flexibility on the amounts involved in the agreement.

Mr Doran told Newstalk Breakfast that the Lansdowne Road Agreement was framed at a certain time. “It was the Minister for Finance who said the emergency is over. If the emergency is over then the public servants who were attacked during the emergency are reasonably entitled to seek earlier restoration of their pay.”

“It is more of the same, failing to reflect a changing reality, it’s not only gardai and teachers at new entrants level who are being paid less than their colleagues. Nurses as well are still about ten per cent less on the first point of the scale.”

“Every public servant suffered a minimum of a 14 per cent cut, nurses on top of that suffered a 13.5 per cent cut in their workforce. Public servants in this country more than carried their share of the burden of recovery.

“No one is expecting it all back on day one, we believe the economy is ripe now for earlier restoration, not total, earlier.

“I would say to the Minister, if you look more closely at the situation, we have a real recruitment and retention problem in nursing and midwifery. He certainly needs to find more than €844million to reflect the demand that the health service itself needs in this country, the fact that neighbouring jurisdictions are paying more are attracting more.

“Nurses were not better protected - nurses, midwives, teachers and gardai were all hit. The difference between nurses/midwives and teachers is the number of new level entrants - because nurses and midwives had no recruitment for five years - and because of teacher:pupil ratios teachers were recruited in that lower pay scale.

“In all these agreements the government retained the right, that in the event of a changed economic situation, the agreement could be revisited. This time we have a changed economic situation except that it got better, no one should be surprised if the public servant unions are seeking early restoration. The Minister going to have to expect that.”