SOME OF the 800 allowances currently paid to public servants, costing the State €1.5 billion each year, will not be protected as “core” pay under the Croke Park agreement, Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin has said.
In comments that will be seen as putting the Government on a collision course with public service unions, Mr Howlin said people would raise an eyebrow when details of some of the expenses were published and they would wonder whether or not there was a place for them.
Mr Howlin yesterday contended that some of these payments were “historic” and were not part of the core pay, which the Croke Park agreement has protected in return for changed work practices and increased productivity.
However, trade unions have warned they would consider any cut in allowances to be a breach of the Croke Park agreement, which guarantees there will be no further pay cuts.
The State pays out nearly €1.5 billion to staff in a range of allowances, premium payments and overtime annually.
It came as records released yesterday disclosed that hundreds of retired civil servants, many of them holding senior positions, have been rehired by Government departments after their retirement.
Some have been rehired after taking the incentivised early retirement in February this year.
In addition to the hundreds of teachers who have been rehired since February by the Department of Education, records released by 13 other Government departments showed that almost 200 retired public servants had been rehired on short-term contracts after taking early retirement, or having reached retirement age.
In most departments, those public servants were at the most senior administrative or technical levels, with more than 60 rehired at assistant secretary level, the second highest rank in a department.
Contracts ranged from short-term ones lasting a matter of weeks to those lasting three years in the case of assistant secretaries rehired by the Department of Foreign Affairs as passport appeals officers.
Two retired senior diplomats have also been given contracts in 2012 to assist in Ireland’s presidency of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The departments that recruited the highest number of retired officials were Agriculture with 66 (most of whom are veterinary inspectors); Environment with 63; Transport (22); and Foreign Affairs (27).
The Department of Health has rehired at least two retired secretaries general on short-term contracts since 2005.
Little detail was released regarding costs. A part-time contract for a retired assistant secretary in Agriculture has cost more than €117,000 to date.
While most departments have applied the abatement rule (where the pension and pay will not exceed full salary), the cost to the exchequer has run into millions of euro since 2005.
The information was released to Labour Party TD Emmet Stagg on foot of parliamentary questions submitted by him to all departments. The Department of Education, which has rehired hundreds of teachers, said it needed more time to fully compile its response.
Mr Howlin’s department is carrying out a review of allowances. Last week he indicated for the first time that some allowances could be lost.
Yesterday the Minister told the Dáil that by and large the changes to most allowances would affect only new entrants.
But he qualified this by saying: “It is clear that there is no longer a justification for some historic allowances. I will seek to address those in the current framework.”
The review of allowances was due to be finalised last February.
However, Mr Howlin said that, as a result of resource constraints, the volume of submissions to be evaluated and the complexity and variance of allowances across all sectors, it had not been possible to finalise the process in the time frame.
