HIGHER CIVIL servants have overwhelmingly voted in favour of accepting the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform.
Members of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants (AHCPS) voted by a margin of 85.5 per cent to 14.5 per cent in favour of the agreement.
A total of 72 per cent of the union’s 3,358 members took part in the ballot.
In an address to the union’s annual conference in Dublin yesterday, its chairman, Peadar Carpenter, said the Croke Park agreement represented “the best deal that we can get”.
However, he said he empathised with those who voted against the agreement.
“Our members have financial commitments the same as every other group, and they have had to endure the highest level of cuts of all public servants.”
Mr Carpenter said many colleagues were outraged at the Government’s decision to reduce the scale of the original pay cuts earmarked for top-level assistant secretaries and deputy secretaries.
He said the timing of this announcement just before Christmas “gave it the appearance of a stroke”.
He urged other union members not to let their hearts rule their heads, and to think strategically and support the deal.
He said as soon as the economy recovered public service unions “will immediately be seeking a restoration of previous pay levels”.
Mr Carpenter also said he could never accept that, as a result of the current difficulties, public service staff “may somehow begin to become corrupt or that we might accept corrupt practices”.
“This goes for whether you are a tax inspector, passport officer, contracts officer, a member of An Garda Síochána, or whatever public post you hold; as to succumb to corruption would be a betrayal of the long and proud tradition of our public services.”
The union’s general secretary, Dave Thomas, said if staff in the public service followed the advice of their individual union executives in the various ballots currently under way the Croke Park deal would be passed by a two-one majority when it is considered finally by the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
He said there were also some indications that members in unions where the executive committees had urged a rejection of the deal might also vote in favour of it.
The AHCPS is the second public service union to back the Croke Park deal in a ballot.
Earlier this week the PSEU, which represents about 10,000 mid-ranking civil servants, also supported the deal.
However, yesterday the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI)reiterated that it was seeking “a resounding No mandate” in its ballot on the deal.
A special meeting of the TUI’s executive committee yesterday unanimously decided that clarifications in recent days from the Department of Education and Skills and the Labour Relations Commission offered “absolutely no basis to amend the union’s recommendation”.
Union general secretary Peter MacMenamin said the clarification did not offer “even a morsel of comfort to teachers, while lecturers in institutes of technology are particularly incensed that no clarification on their sector was offered”.