Gardaí and teachers urged to engage in talks on grievances

The Government has told gardaí and secondary school teachers who are planning a wave of strikes over pay that they should re-engage in talks on their grievances within the framework of the Lansdowne Road pay agreement.

On Tuesday, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe signalled that the Government was standing firm behind the Lansdowne Road accord as the centrepiece of its public service pay policy.

He said the Lansdowne Road accord was the “only agreement that the Government will be honouring and can afford to honour”.

Mr Donohoe said the country could not afford to go down the path of “leap- frogging” wage deals, where once a pay agreement was reached with one part of the public service, it immediately triggered another claim for a wage increase elsewhere.

“That is why we have such an agreement as the Lansdowne Road Agreement in place.

“The Lansdowne Road Agreement remains the most affordable and only mechanism by which we can meet the commitment we have to the public to deliver improved public services, while also managing in an affordable way the understandable needs of those working inside our public services regarding their own wage needs for the future.”

Mr Donohoe urged gardaí and members of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) who have rejected the Lansdowne Road deal, “to engage with the Government to clarify the nature of the proposals the Government is making available to deal with matters of concern to their members”.

The Minster said the proposals put forward by the Government to address the concerns of gardaí and teachers were “credible and serious”.

Gardaí are planning to stage four days of strikes next month over pay and access to the State’s industrial relations mechanisms.

The ASTI is planning seven days of work stoppages over lower-pay rates for recently-recruited teachers and a withdrawal from supervision and substitution duties in protest at penalties imposed by the Government on the union for “repudiating” the Lansdowne Road deal.

Mr Donohoe said it was absolutely vital that the Government bear in mind the 250,000 other public servants who had voted to accept the Lansdowne Road deal.

He said their unions were “making clear publicly [that] were there to be any change in the core wages for other sectors [in the public service], they would expect the same.

“That is a situation the economy cannot afford at the moment.”

Framework

Mr Donohoe said the framework of the Lansdowne Road Agreement had already shown it was sufficiently flexible to deal with the concerns of other public service groups, such as fire-fighters and psychiatric nurses.

He said the accord also provided for improvements in pay for new teachers who were members of two other teaching unions, the INTO and TUI.

He said it was very important that engagement continued between Garda representative organisations, the ASTI and the Government on the proposals that were on the table.

He said the Government had agreed to restore rent allowances for gardaí as part of these proposals, “because we understood the case put by representative bodies”.

He said the Government proposals to the ASTI “will have the ability to increase new entrant pay by 15 and 22 per cent by January 2018, a pre-tax gain of €6,000 for those who participate in that agreement”.

Mr Donohoe said that the Cabinet had re-affirmed on Tuesday that Ministers and Ministers of State will not receive pay rises due next spring under the pay restoration mechanisms in the Lansdowne Road Agreement.

He argued that the pay of TDs should continue to be “anchored” to that of principal officers in the civil service, as otherwise it would lead to a return to the days of politicians determining what other politicians were paid.

Mr Donohoe also announced that the former chairman of the Labour Court Kevin Duffy will head up the new public service pay commission, which will advise the Government on how to deal with the affordability of public pay in the future and on its commitment to unwind financial emergency legislation (known as Fempi) in an affordable and orderly manner.