No clarity on financing of €120m public pay hikes
Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe is to bring forward a €1,000 pay rise for workers signed up to the Lansdowne Road agreement who earn up to €65,000.
But a funding black hole appeared to emerge last night as Mr Donohoe could not pinpoint exactly where the money would come from.
The increases had been due to kick in from September but will now be introduced from April in a bid to avoid industrial unrest .
However, just hours after he had announced the sweetener, Mr Donohoe came under a prolonged grilling form opposition TDs, who claimed the figures were a “fairytale” and made a “mockery” of the budgetary system.
Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary said: “Since the budget you have essentially been able to find from nowhere €170m [yesterday’s sum and the €50m for gardaí].
“That’s one very big sofa if it has €170m down the back of it.”
Appearing before the Budgetary Oversight Committee, Mr Donohoe was asked to give exact details of how the pay hike — worth around €416 over five months — will be funded.
Mr Donohoe said the money will come from efficiencies and savings but said: “I am not saying that I have identified savings or efficiencies and I am not giving them to you, that is not the case.”
The latest sum is on top of an additional €100m which was found immediately before the budget.
Committee member Lisa Chambers said nobody was “begrudging” public sector workers a pay increase but said it is “impossible” for the committee and opposition parties to put forward realistic budget proposals if they are not provided with the true figures.
“It makes a mockery of the process because we are not working off the same figures that you are operating from,” she told the minister.
Labour’s Joan Burton asked Mr Donohoe to provide details of where the funds required for the Garda pay deal will come from, dubbing it a “fairytale”.
“You are not a magician but to conjure up an extra €25m out of Justice you would need to be,” she said.
The accelerated pay increase was hammered out with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) during talks to tackle the anomalies presented as a result of the Garda pay deal which was recommended by the Labour Court before Christmas.
But a union source said “no one is exactly doing high fives around the place” while Tom Geraghty, general secretary of the Public Service Executive Union, described it as a “down payment”.
