Revisit Lansdowne Road agreement, says Kieran Mulvey

The chief executive of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has called for the Lansdowne Road agreement to be "revisited" if teachers, gardaí or nurses struggle to be recruited because of low entry pay.

Kieran Mulvey said the amount of money paid to entry grade levels for the professions was "a problem that comes back to bite you after a while".

“I know that agreement lasts until September 2018 but if we can’t recruit teachers, and we can’t recruit gardaí, or civil servants, or nurses because of the pay- then we need to revisit it,” he said.

“There is nothing to stop it being revisited at a later stage.”

Speaking on RTÉ's Claire Byrne Live, Mr Mulvey said he would not compare "one worker to another" when asked about a garda's starting salary of €23,000 and a Luas worker at about €32,000.

“I wouldn’t get into that,” he said. “I cannot comment on the Luas dispute. I seem to get into trouble when I do so.”

Mr Mulvey said restoration of pay was not happening quickly enough for gardaí, nurses and teachers.

“These are the young people we rely on to stay in the country, these are the young people who are vital to our public services and our front line provision of those services,” he said.

“If the finances are available, and maybe they are, that’s where I would put the priority.”

Living wage

General secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union (CPSU) Eoin Ronayne, says that new civil service recruits cannot afford to live on their pay which is below the living wage.

“Early entrants on the three lowest grades of clerical officer are on a pay level that is below the living wage”, he said.

"As recruitment begins again people will be saying we cannot afford to work here," Mr Ronayne told RTE's Morning Ireland on Tuesday.

“They cannot live in Dublin on the rates of pay and they are leaving.”

Mr Royayne said that politicians had created expectations during the election.

“There is a view that the economy can be whatever you want it to be on the day, depending on who you are talking to. The general election rhetoric created expectations.”

He added that it was time for the Lansdowne Road Agreement to be renegotiated. “Agreements are there for a purpose, they have to be flexible if changes are needed.”

INMO

Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) general secretary Liam Doran said on Monday the union was calling for a renegotiation of the Landsdowne Road agreement.

He said members “have not experienced the soft winds of recovery”.

“We want a timeframe for rescinding pay cuts. The pace of restructuring will have to be sped up. The public sector wants to see the recovery reflected in pay packets,” he said.

“No one is suggesting that we are out of the woods yet. The reality is that the health service is under resourced, it is still in crisis. We’ve had the worst March trolley figures ever, still haven’t got enough beds, still not enough staff.”

Garda Representative Association

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) is also calling for pay to be restored as a "matter of urgency" to attract people to join the force.

Ciaran O’Neill, vice president of GRA, said this week that new people found it “extremely tough” on a starting pay of €23,000.

ASTI

The ASTI conference voted last week in favour of balloting for strike action if the pay gap between recently-recruited teachers and more established colleagues is not closed.

The teaching unions have a number of considerable grievances such as low pay for new entrants, underfunding, understaffing, excessive workload, casualisation and income poverty and appropriate terms of employment.

Talks between Department of Education and unions have started on these issues.

The main elements negotiated last year are as follows:

*Most public service staff to receive €2,000 in increased earnings in three phases between January 2016 and September 2017. This to come about through a combination of flat-rate adjustments to the public service pension levy and a partial reversal of pay cuts introduced in 2010

*The €1,000 pay hike scheduled for 2017 will only apply to those earning less than €65,000

*Public servants earning above €100,000 a year will have cuts imposed under the 2013 Haddington Road agreement restored over three phases, beginning in 2017

*Most retired public service staff will receive about €1,680 more in their pensions over the next three years as part of a parallel pension restoration initiative