Unite union seeks Central Bank retention pay information

Trade union Unite has asked the new governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Philip Lane, to provide it with the legal advice the bank has received on the controversial retention payments made to staff over the past four years.

It also called on Mr Lane to demonstrate leadership on the issue after it emerged recently that the Central Bank had paid €234,176 in such payments since 2011.

Some 29 employees are in receipt of the payments, which equate on average to 21 per cent of their salaries. The Central Bank did not seek Government approval for the payments and insists it complies with financial emergency legislation on public-sector pay.

Unite believes the payments breach the ban on bonuses and has questioned why only certain staff were paid the retention money.

"We do not hold you responsible for the past misdeeds of organisational management," Unite's regional officer Colm Quinlan said in his letter to Mr Lane, which was distributed to the union's members at the bank. "However, by virtue of your office, you have a responsibility to ensure that the concerns of staff are addressed, and that public confidence in the integrity of the organisation is restored."

Fiasco

He added: “We, the staff of the Central Bank, look to you for the leadership needed to resolve the current fiasco and to guide the direction of the organisation in the future.”

He noted that 92 per cent of the votes cast in a recent ballot of members were in favour of a motion of no confidence in the Central Bank’s management.

In his letter, seen by The Irish Times, Mr Quinlan said this represented a "level of dissatisfaction with management unparalleled in recent years, and must be addressed". He said the "misleading communications and secrecy which these bonus schemes have come to exemplify cannot be allowed to become the norm in the organisation".

He added that the “drip-feed of information about the payments”, had “brought the bank into public disrepute”.

Mr Lane was in Frankfurt on Thursday for a meeting of the European Central Bank on interest rates but a spokesperson for the Central Bank confirmed that he had received Unite's letter and referred to its previous statements calling on the union to engage in "agreed industrial relations procedures".

The Central Bank said its legal advice was a “combination of internal and external legal advice before proceeding with the introduction of the policy and is satisfied, based on the policy’s limited applicability and the identification of key risks to our mandate that the payments are Fempi [financial emergency legislation] compliant”.