Pat Leahy: Government cannot afford to blink first on Garda strike

With the ink hardly dry on the minority Government’s first budget – and while Ministers derive a fair bit of satisfaction from its successful conclusion – the Government is suddenly faced with an even more serious threat to its very existence.

A strike by An Garda Síochána presents the sort of challenge to any Government that it has to face down if it wishes to maintain its authority. It is precisely because the stakes are so high in such a confrontation that it has never happened before.

A coinciding teachers’ strike, though less incendiary, is probably more disruptive for most people.

So the political agenda will be dominated by the threatened strikes until such time as the matter reaches a conclusion, one way or another.

Judging by conversations with a variety of high-ranking sources in Leinster House over the last few days, the resolution to hang tough is better than anything that the Government has come up with so far.

This is more a matter of necessity than of choice. The Government’s view is that if it concedes a special deal for either the teachers or the gardaí outside the Lansdowne Road Agreement then the pay pact is dead, and a free for all will emerge within weeks.

This view has been strongly reinforced in recent days by the leaders of unions adhering to the agreement. In the words of one person familiar with the exchanges , they have told the Government that “if anyone gets anything outside of Lansdowne Road it will be impossible for unions to restrain their own members”.

At that point the entire public pay settlement falls apart. And that means that the budget for next year is in ruins. If that happens, the Government is dead.

Stronger than it looks

The Fine Gael-led administration was characterised in much post-budget commentary as operating from a position of political and parliamentary weakness, obliged to stretch available resources to keep its constituent parts happy. There is a fair bit of truth to that. But in terms of its stance on the proposed strikes, the alliance is stronger than it looks.

The three parts of the arrangement – Fine Gael and the Independents on the inside and Fianna Fáil on the outside – are completely committed to maintaining the existing budget settlement.

This was a pillar of the confidence and supply agreement that underpins Fianna Fáil support for the Government.

It is not just an act of public-spirited altruism on the part of Fianna Fáil. The party leadership believes that it is in their political interest to act as much like a government as it can while in Opposition, and supporting public pay restraint is a central part of that.

Opinions will differ on the justification of the gardaí and the teachers’ complaints. But there is no doubt that they are deeply felt.

Even allowing for the fact that the activists who attend conferences are more likely to be extreme in their views than the majority of the unions’ members, there is clearly a widespread feeling of frustration and anger among thousands of teachers and gardaí and other public servants who have seen their incomes cut, their taxes increase and heard about an economic recovery that feels utterly remote.

It is true that many public servants have seen their incomes cleaved since 2008, many by as much as 20 per cent. That has led to real hardship for many people who had expectations that their circumstances would be very different.

Guaranteed pensions

But only part of this was through pay cuts and the pension levy; much of it was through tax increases that everyone else paid, too. They didn’t lose their jobs. Many of them saw their pay cuts at least partially restored through the payments of increments – the annual pay increases that many public servants receive. They retained their guaranteed pensions.

Much of the focus on the current dispute has been on young teachers and gardaí. But low starting salaries are not confined to the public sector, and teachers and gardaí benefit from a variety of benefits and allowances that are not general in the public service – as other unions point out – never mind in the workforce at large.

For example, while a garda’s starting salary is below €24,000, allowances and overtime typically lift this significantly.

According to the Department of Public Expenditure, which signs the cheques, the average pay for a garda one year after recruitment is €31,000. The offer under Lansdowne Road is to restore the €4,000 annual rent allowance.

The offer accepted by the other teaching unions, would mean remuneration for a teacher recruited in 2013 – including increments, supervision payments and so on – would be more than €40,000 next year. That is hardly a fortune, to be sure, but increments will see it rise over the years ahead.

Public opinion

The relative importance of these facts is disputed, of course. But they are facts, all the same, and they will become important as the dispute progresses. All industrial relations disputes are to some extent a struggle for public opinion.

There may well be a case that it is in the national interest to pay gardaí and teachers more from the public purse. But gardaí and teachers are probably not the best judges of that.

As the growing economy affords the Government some limited room for manoeuvre, budgetary planning is in danger of turning into a regulated scramble by interest groups, public and private, for resources and concessions.

If that does happen, it doesn’t require a great deal of imagination or foresight to see where it will eventually end up.