THE DEPARTMENT of Finance is to consider proposals for pay increases of up to 5.5 per cent for top-level managers in the health service.
The Department of Health has told the Department of Finance that national directors and assistant national directors in the Health Service Executive did not receive increases recommended by the review body on top level pay in the public service in 2007.
The Department of Health document states that increases for some national directors would be capped at 5 per cent and for others at 5.5 per cent. It also states that assistant national directors could receive rises of 2.3 per cent.
The staff concerned have benefited from the controversial decision by the Department of Finance just before Christmas to reduce the level of pay cuts announced in the budget.
The Department of Health has referred a decision on paying the increases to the Department of Finance for consideration in the context of the emergency legislation which provided for the recent pay cuts in the public service.
Salary scales for national directors in the HSE range from about €140,000 to over €170,000 although some are paid more based on personal contracts.
The 2007 Review Body report recommended increases of up to 19.5 per cent in pay for some top-level HSE staff. However, the Government capped all awards for public service staff at about 5 per cent. Increases proposed for senior health sector staff were not paid at the time.
Last week, in reply to a parliamentary question from Ruairi Quinn of the Labour Party, Mr Lenihan said that the Department of Health had drawn his attention “to outstanding awards arising from Report No 42 of the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in respect of certain HSE grades, which were not implemented prior to the enactment of the pay reduction legislation”. He said that no determination had been made.
The Dáil last night began debating a Fine Gael proposal to reverse the controversial Government decision to reduce pay cuts for top public servants.
Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said the decision to exempt 655 senior public servants from the full impact of pay cuts was “unfair and unjustifiable”.
The U-turn followed strong lobbying by the senior staff association that any cuts should take account of money lost as a result of the abolition of a bonus scheme which averaged 10 per cent of salary. The staff body said it had legal opinion that the performance-related bonus scheme, which the Government initially suspended and later scrapped, formed an integral part of members’ remuneration packages.
Industrial action in the public service over pay cuts entered a new phase yesterday. Lower-paid civil servants, who are members of the CPSU, refused to operate public counters in some Government departments until 11am. The union said that other departments would be similarly affected today.