PUBLIC SERVICE PAYROLL:UP TO 5,000 State-employed workers will have to quit and not be replaced if the Government is to meet its cutback spending targets.
Under the plan, all departments - except health and education, State agencies and local authorities - will have to cut their pay bills by 3 per cent by the end of 2008.
The reduction, however, will be made to a total sum that will include the 2 and a half per cent pay award given to all State workers under the terms of Towards 2016 in March and a further 2and a half per cent to be paid from September.
"The 3 per cent in respect of all other departments, State agencies and local authorities should yield €250 million by the end of 2009," Taoiseach Brian Cowen told Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny in the Dáil yesterday.
The measures will save between €10 million and €20 million this year and €250 million next year, the Government insisted last night, despite doubts that the number of departures required by State workers will materialise.
Jobs will not be lost in education and health, while a redundancy plan in the Health Service Executive will be strictly limited to getting rid of managers who have had no useful work to do since the HSE was formed.
A significant number of the job cuts may have to be found from a cull of temporary or contract staff hired to work for State agencies given independence over the last decade.
The final decisions will be taken by local managers "in light of the local circumstances", Mr Lenihan told a crowded Government Buildings press conference yesterday.
"Measures to be taken would include control of premium pay, management of vacancies, the organisation of work processes and the levels at which work is carried out, as well as control of numbers through recruitment and other measures," he said.
The Department of Finance said last night work could, in many cases, be carried out more cheaply by lower-grade public servants than had been the case up to now.
The Government was unable to provide figures on the numbers of workers expected to retir, while the numbers quitting or seeking leave of absence will drop as the economic climate worsens.
Last night Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said €190 million of the savings would come from the civil and public service, while €50 million more would come from local authority job-shedding.
Fine Gael deputy leader and finance spokesman Richard Bruton, who has long called for a cull of the large numbers of State agencies that have proliferated over the last decade, warned that savings would be hard to get.
"They are treating every agency equally, whether or not they are a high-performing agency delivering superb service to the public, or whether they are a hopeless agency that should be closed down," he said.
The Taoiseach told Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore in the Dáil that the job cuts plan was not about "applying a blunt uniform inflexible embargo instrument, but [the cuts] are providing the necessary manoeuvrability at local level for local management in the light of local circumstances to identify appropriate measures, which would include, in some cases, non-recruitment of non-frontline staff or non-essential staff, based on the present situation, or considering the question of premium pay, management of vacancies, the organisation of work processes, etc."