Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 9 March 2017
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 11 - Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (Revised)
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances (Revised)
Vote 14 - State Laboratory (Revised)
Vote 15 - Secret Service (Revised)
Vote 17 - Public Appointments Service (Revised)
Vote 18 - National Shared Services Office (Revised)
Vote 19 - Office of the Ombudsman (Revised)
Vote 39 - Office of Government Procurement (Revised)
11:10 am
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source
My anticipation of how this process and the related negotiation will develop is as follows. The Public Service Pay Commission is now in the middle of receiving submissions and meeting stakeholders.
I thank its members for all their work. I thank the board and panel that has agreed to do this work for all the effort that has been put in. I asked in the terms of reference that they would complete their work by quarter 2 of this year. My expectation is they will complete the work between April and May. That report will then provide an important input to negotiations that will commence shortly after that in respect of whether we can secure a further collective agreement.
The broad thrust of the work they are doing is to examine what could a roadmap be for the affordable and orderly unwinding of the FEMPI legislation, which will take time. Matters they are considering relate to rates of pay within the public service. They are being compared to elsewhere, where appropriate, within the private sector or where we have integrated labour markets comparable with other jurisdictions and examining the differentials. When the report is complete, I anticipate a period of reflection will take place for a number of weeks within government on the matter and then among the interlocutors within the trade union movement. I hope we will commence negotiations before the summer and my ambition is to conclude them well in advance of budget 2018.
I addressed this matter at another forum earlier. Those discussions will be difficult. We are operating at a time, understandably, of high expectations and balancing the needs of our public servants and their wages against other demands and needs our country has in respect of service improvements and investing for the future will make the negotiations challenging, but I am approaching them in the spirit that we need a collective agreement, which is the fairest and most effective way for a small, open economy to manage one third of its public expenditure.
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