THE GOVERNMENT has clarified the application of the public service pay cuts but there was continuing controversy in the Dáil yesterday over the fact that judges remain exempt.
Government chief whip Pat Carey said the pay cuts would apply to those entitled to a public service pension but would not apply to people paid from the public purse who did not have an entitlement to such a pension.
Mr Carey told the Dáil the Government had taken the widest possible definition of a “public service body” in the legislation on the cuts in order to spread the burden as evenly as possible across the 350,000 workers in the public service.
“However, this created potential for some individuals to be defined as public servants although they would not regard themselves as such, nor would their employers regard them as such,” he said.
“This is because the State helps to pay for the employment of thousands of people by a myriad of bodies and through a wide variety of funding mechanisms to do valuable work in the community.”
Mr Carey added that the simplest way to define public service employees and distinguish between them and private sector employees whose employment is helped by State funding, was to use the approach taken when applying the pension-related deduction.
He said an amendment to the draft Bill clearly defined who was affected by the pay reduction by linking it to access to a public service pension scheme.
On the issue of judges being exempt from the pay cut, Labour TD Seán Sherlock was one of a number of Opposition speakers who told Minister of State for Finance Martin Mansergh that legal niceties should not be allowed to supersede the principle of fairness.
“I believe we need to start slaughtering a few sacred cows in this great republic of ours,” Mr Sherlock said.
“When somebody in the public service has to incur a cut of €1,500 in his or her salary and a member of the judiciary is exempt by virtue of a constitutional arrangement, that speaks volumes about the nature of the society in the Republic.”
It will not become clear until the new year how many of the country’s 142 judges have voluntarily opted into the pension levy introduce in last April’s budget.