Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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280. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the estimated full year cost of repealing the FEMPI legislation. [24803/20]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The unwinding of the emergency FEMPI legislation commenced with the Lansdowne Road Agreement, 2016 - 2018 and is continuing under the Public Service Stability Agreement, 2018 - 2020 (PSS). To date, salary rates up to €50,000 have been fully restored.

On 1 October 2020, under the PSSA, annualised salaries for all public sector employees will be increased by 2% . At this point, annualised salary rates up to €70,000, which accounts for over 90% of the public service, will be fully restored.

Allowances reduced under the 2009 FEMPI act are also set to be fully restored on the 1 October 2020. Both these measures are provided for in primary legislation in the Public Services Pay and Pensions Act 2017.

Separately, the Public Service Pay and Pensions Act 2017 provides for the full unwinding of the Public Service Pension Reduction (PSPR). To date, the vast majority of public service pensioners (an estimated 97%) have been removed from the PSPR. A residual group of 3 - 4,000 pensioners remain affected.

In addition, a Ministerial Order is required to complete FEMPI pay restoration for those public servants whose salary will not be fully restored (those on annualised remuneration greater than €70,000) through the PSSA increases. Under section 19 and section 20 of the Public Service Pay and Pensions Act, for those covered by the Agreement, the legislation provides for these remaining amounts to be paid no later than July 2022.

Combined, the full year cost of the measures above are estimated at €520m.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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281. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the estimated full year cost of paying all employed public sector staff on the pre-2011 pay grade. [24804/20]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The reduced new entrant pay scales for civil and public servants introduced in 2011 were abolished in 2013 under the Haddington Road Agreement, where it was agreed to merge the new scales and existing scales - typically by adding the lower two points of the new scale to the existing scale. As such there are no separate reduced pay scales for civil and public servants.

Under the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA) 2018 – 2020, it was agreed to examine the remaining salary scale issues, associated with the addition of the extra points, for those recruited to entry grades after January 2011. The report, available at the below link, was laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas in March 2018, estimates the point in time cost of advancing new entrants to the public service two points along their incremental scales.

The report estimated a cost of €199.8m in respect of 60,513 new entrants, an average cost of €3,300 per FTE.

Following this report, lengthy and intensive negotiations with the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions took place over 2018 resulting in an agreement on new entrant salary scales being reached in September 2018.

The main components of the agreement are:

-where two additional scale points were applied to pay scales under the Haddington Road Agreement, it was agreed that there will be two separate interventions in the pay scales as they apply to new entrant public servants recruited since January 2011.

- the two separate interventions will take place at point 4 and point 8of the pay scales. The practical effect of this is that for new entrants the relevant points on the scale will be bypassed, thereby reducing the time spent on the scale for progression to the maximum point.

- this measure was applied from 1 March 2019 and will be applied to each new entrant as they reach the relevant scale points (point 4 and point 8) on their current increment date.

This is an agreement of considerable scale and complexity, each element of which was the product of negotiation with ICTU.

It is estimated that some 58% (35,750) of new entrants benefited from this measure in 2019, rising to 78% (47,750) in 2020.