Sir, – Harry McGee (Home News, October 15th) claims the Government must demonstrate that savings from the Haddington Road agreement "are real and not just paper transfers." If he wants evidence that the savings are real, I suggest he asks one of the 13 per cent of public servants whose pay was reduced, for the third time, in July 2013. Or any of the hundreds of thousands of public servants who will see their increments frozen in the coming months.
These are cash savings, not “paper transfers”. What’s more, they come on top of 14 per cent average pay cuts across the public sector since 2009, a 30,000 staffing reduction, and other major cost-saving reforms already delivered under Croke Park (worth €1.8 billion to the exchequer so far) or planned under Haddington Road. Public servants have also been subject to the same increased taxes and charges as everyone else over the past five years. – Yours, etc,
BERNARD HARBOR,
Head of Communications,
Impact Trade Union,
Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1.