THE GOVERNMENT may have to renegotiate the Croke Park agreement on public service pay and reform next year, Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte has said.
Speaking last night on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics, he said “it may well be the case, especially depending on how things go in the euro zone, that we will have to sit down and talk to the unions about renegotiating that agreement”.
“But that depends on growth rates, growth projections and it depends on whether it delivers,” said Mr Rabbitte
Under the Croke Park agreement the Government guaranteed not to introduce further pay cuts or compulsory redundancies for staff in the public service until 2014 at least in return for co-operation with widespread reforms.
Ministers have repeatedly said that unions would have to deliver on their side of the bargain if the guarantees on pay and jobs were to remain. However, this is the first time a Minister has indicated that economic conditions could force a renegotiation of the deal.
Asked on the programme last night if the Government would decide to freeze incremental pay increases for staff in the public service next year – which cost about €250 million – the Minister said: “Without any doubt it would be the end of trying to push through reforms, that are badly needed in the national interest, by consensus. They would be resisted.
“The unions have made it very plain that they regard increments as part of the Croke Park agreement.
“So the Croke Park agreement was solemnly entered into by our predecessors. If it doesn’t deliver we will have to revisit it. In due course when it is reviewed we are free to sit down with the unions and renegotiate it in the national interest.”
Responding to Mr Rabbitte, a leading Siptu official said where the Minister was heading was “dangerous territory”.
In a statement, Siptu’s national health organiser Paul Bell said the time had come for health workers in the public and voluntary sector “to confront the constant and ongoing conditioning by commentators, politicians and vested interests who are not party to the Croke Park agreement but are determined to undermine it, even though many of them have not even read it.
“I speak for in excess of 43,000 health workers employed in the public, voluntary and private health services throughout Ireland and throughout all grades, and I have this to say, having had the opportunity to meet many of them in Mayo, Roscommon, Dublin and Cork over the past week.
“Our members are preparing to reassert their rights within the Croke Park agreement, and to confront those who say that enough hasn’t been done by health workers to modernise and make the service more efficient.
“I am convinced that our members have been suffering losses in their salary, enduring redeployment within the 45km radius as agreed, and have had to work within the terms of the Croke Park agreement, while at the same time dealing with the low morale of those working in a service which is losing people through exit schemes, which are more focused on budget than care for the patients.”
Mr Bell said his members would not accept any further cuts in their pay, either through loss of or freezing of increments, cuts in premiums or allowances which are paid to health workers for working unsocial hours.
“Our members have a very simple message for the Government; the Croke Park agreement provides for no cuts in pay and our members, many of them on low pay and poor pensions, have worked on that premise even though modernisation of the health service has hit them further in their pay packet due to loss in premiums for working shifts and unsocial hours, brought about through changes in rosters and the introduction of the longer working day.
“And further cuts have also arisen whereby additional travel has come about with redeployment due to bed or hospital closures.”
Mr Bell said a most immediate threat to health services around the country was just around the corner with the anticipated exit of more than 2,000 workers from the service on or before February 29th.
He said there was no contingency plan in place as to how the public would access safe health services in these circumstances.
“I am also deeply concerned that nurses in the mental and intellectual disability sections of the national health service are leaving in significant numbers, thereby putting our most vulnerable service users in a precarious position.
“These are the issues which I would most welcome a discussion on with Government under any review of the Croke Park agreement.”