Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 127: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the average basic earnings of a prison officer in respect of each year since 2002 to date in 2007; and the average earnings of a prison officer, including overtime. [13767/07]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
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As the Deputy will be aware, a situation had developed in the Prison Service whereby the capital budget and every other budget within the system was being highly subsidised to fund overtime expenditure.

In order to reverse this wholly unsustainable dependence on overtime, on my appointment I put in place a number of measures including major cutbacks in overtime expenditure and new attendance arrangements. Following prolonged negotiations the POA, in August 2005, accepted a proposal for organisational change eliminating overtime working and introducing new organisational and working arrangements which will provide long term savings to the Exchequer of up to €25m per annum.

Accordingly, while overtime in respect of the Prison Officer grade amounted to €44.3m in 2002, the corresponding figure for overtime and additional hours payments in 2006 amounted to €23.8m. This represents a saving, for this grade of staff, of €20.5m in cash terms. Obviously, this saving would be significantly more in real terms.

The average basic earnings and the average earnings including allowances and overtime of the Prison Officer grade in respect of each year from 2002 to 2006 are as follows:

As I have stated, following agreement on the Proposal for Organisational Change in the Prison Service in August 2005, overtime was replaced by a system of additional hours based on the concept of "annualised hours". As the roll-out of the new system commenced towards the end of 2005 and continued into 2006, the full year impact will not be felt until 2007. The Deputy should also note that the above figures include year-on-year general round increases under the various National Wage Agreements and awards made under the Benchmarking process.

Finally, the Deputy should note that figures for 2007 have not been included in the table above because one quarter only would not provide a true reflection of Prison Officer earnings relative to 2002-2006 which are shown on a year-on-year basis.