Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

In the Taoiseach's reply on the pay agreement that has been concluded, I understood him to say that it is the Government's intention to honour the terms of the agreement. I would like the Taoiseach to pursue the logic of this. No money has been provided by the Government to honour the agreement's terms. On the contrary, as he has confirmed to the House, there is a requirement on Departments, State agencies and public bodies to effect a 3% cut in their payrolls. There is a pay pause in the public sector until September next year. How can the Government honour the terms of the pay agreement when it requires public bodies to effect a cut in payroll? Some public bodies may be able to achieve such a cut by reducing staff, through retirements they do not replace or letting contract staff go but I expect there will be public bodies not in that position. Are public bodies free to claim inability to pay if they cannot achieve a 3% of 4% cut in payroll in circumstances where they are required to honour the pay agreement?

One of the terms in the pay agreement that I found difficult to understand was the provision for the final phase of the pay increase in the public service. The final phase is for a month. A phase of a pay agreement for the duration of a month is highly unusual. Does it follow that a second pay pause is teed up in that agreement at the end of that month? I have never come across a pay agreement that allowed for a pay increase on the first of one month, with a subsequent pay agreement kicking in on the first of the following month. Is there a second pay pause effectively built into the concluded agreement?

I drew attention to the last benchmarking report for higher paid public servants in January. The report appears to be following the logic that higher paid public servants and chief executives of State bodies should be benchmarked against chief executives in the private sector. We are not comparing like with like. We have seen what developed in the wider private sector, where the pay of chief executives has gone way up. Some companies pay their chief executives in millions and pay their staff the minimum wage. That logic has never applied in the public sector. It caused concern that there appeared to be a tendency in the last benchmarking report to move in that direction.

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