Calls for the next round of benchmarking pay increases to be withheld were dismissed yesterday as "absolute folly" and "utter madness" by the vice-president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Peter McLoone.
Rounding on the critics of the €1.1 billion benchmarking deal, he said they were the same people who for years had been demanding a reform of the way public service pay was determined.
If they now got their way and the Government reneged on the deal, the result would be a return to the old days of pay claims based on relativities within the public service. That would undo everything that had been achieved, including a stable industrial relations environment, since the benchmarking process was set in train, he argued.
Mr McLoone was speaking at a press conference at which the ICTU's public services committee, which he chairs, released a document outlining the reforms benchmarking has brought about.
Benchmarking and better services: What taxpayers and service users get for their money, challenges the view of critics like Fine Gael leader Mr Enda Kenny, who claims the process has not delivered anything to the consumer.
In a section headed "Payback time for taxpayers", the document lists a range of service improvements, increases in productivity and other benchmarking-related reforms.
It says the process has brought an end to the "pay link spiral" which meant pay rises for nurses "automatically led to increased pay bills for guards, soldiers, prison officers and others. This was the Government's main objective going into benchmarking - and it's been delivered."
Strikes over pay or any other matter covered by Sustaining Progress are also precluded by the benchmarking deal, the document points out.
Improved public services listed by the document include longer health service opening hours, the holding of some parent-teacher meetings outside school hours, an extension of lunchtime opening hours and an expansion of on-line services.
Mr McLoone insisted that no procedure or process within the public service had been left unchanged as a result of these reforms. He added that performance verification groups, set up to monitor the changes, were active on the ground and "going about their work very robustly".
The groups will be required to confirm at the end of November that modernisation programmes are on target, for staff to qualify for the 50 per cent instalment of benchmarking due in January.
The first quarter of the increase, which averaged 8.9 per cent, has already been paid and the final instalment is due in June 2005.
Fine Gael remained unconvinced by the ICTU's arguments. The party's finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton TD, said it was clear to the consumers of public services that there had been no tangible benefits. He called for the deal to be renegotiated "in the interests of all taxpayers".
