A new benchmarking process with increased transparency is to be demanded today by members of the State's largest public sector union.
Delegates to the biennial conference of Impact will debate a number of motions calling for future benchmarking rounds to involve increased access to information underpinning the decisions made.
Civil and public servants received pay increases averaging 8.9 per cent in the last benchmarking round, which ended in July 2002. In arriving at its conclusions, the benchmarking body drew on data from the private sector which was not made public.
Discussions on a new round of benchmarking are due to begin during the Sustaining Progress partnership agreement, which expires at the end of next year.
Five Impact branches have tabled motions calling for a more transparent approach. The Health and Safety Authority branch, for example, says the criteria on which the awards are made "should be explained and made public".
A motion from the forensic science branch calls for the parties to be allowed access to the data upon which the benchmarking body bases its recommendations.
The conference takes place over three days in Tralee, Co Kerry. At its opening session last night, the union's president, Mr Nicholas Keogh, said the last benchmarking round involved the biggest ever independent comparison of public and private sector pay.
It had found that most public servants had fallen behind during the boom years around the turn of the millennium. The Government's decision to pay the increases, however, had unleashed an unprecedented attack on public services and those who delivered them.
"Nothing prepared us for the vicious and relentless attacks that followed the Government's decision to pay the benchmarking awards. Economists, commentators, journalists and politicians - many of whom had not even read the report - jumped on the bandwagon to blame all the ills of society on benchmarking.
"One morning when I was listening to the radio, I heard a businessman go unchallenged when he blamed public sector pay for the exorbitant prices of new houses." Mr Keogh challenged suggestions that the public service pay bill was a drain on resources. Without public servants, there would be no public service, he said.