Madam, - I would like to respond to recent letters published by you from prison officers about the current negotiations between the Prison Officers' Association and prison management. We believe the overall coverage by The Irish Times fairly reflects the complexity of the issue and the range of views on it.
Prison officers in Ireland enjoy a very high basic pay and allowances package compared with their peers internationally and indeed other Irish public sector workers of similar-level qualifications. We are not aware of any jurisdiction where prison officers enjoy higher rates of pay.
Basic entry level grade prison officers in our Service (who are qualified to Leaving Certificate level) now earn a minimum of €29,267 a year before any rostered attendance allowances or overtime earnings are taken into account. An estimated average €5,300 in rostered attendance allowances were paid to such staff in 2002. Overtime earnings for prison officers averaged €19,000 last year but went as high as €79,000 in the case of one officer. On the maximum of the basic grade prison officer scale these earnings before overtime rise to €45,000. This would be after 10 years' service in the entry level grade. Under the current offer the requirement for working overtime by such officers as a group would be halved through eliminating unnecessary tasks, the use of technology in automating gates etc. and through more efficient organisation of prisoner escorts among other operational reforms.
Prison officers are still negotiating the terms on which they will agree to operate these improved arrangements. The package rejected by prison officers last month would have resulted in a pay and allowances package for a basic grade officer on the top of his pay scale of €57,230 in 2003. This would have included recompense for an additional attendance liability of up to 360 hours a year on top of the normal 39-hour week.
The entire objective of the proposed annual hours package is to make prison officers' working lives more predictable through reducing unnecessary attendance by approximately 50 per cent. - Yours, etc.,
JIM MICHELL,
Press and Information Officer,
Irish Prison Service,
Clondalkin,
Dublin 22.