Senior Air Corps pilots operating helicopter emergency service to receive allowance payments

Senior Air Corps pilots operating the emergency aeromedical service are to receive allowance payments backdated to July 2013 following an adjudication ruling.

The ruling is expected to see about a dozen senior pilots share about €25,000 in payments. They will also be paid allowances for future operational deployments with the service.

The helicopter medical evacuation service is operated by the HSE's National Ambulance Service in conjunction with the Irish Air Corps and the Department of Defence and is based in Athlone. It is used to transfer rapidly patients needing critical care to the most suitable hospital.

However the Representative Association for Commissioned Officers (RACO), which backed the case, said more senior pilots had been denied the allowance since 2013.

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RACO said that the Department of Defence had argued that as the pilots were senior officers, they were not entitled to the same allowances as junior officers, despite taking on the same risk.

Aeromedical service

RACO said that emergency aeromedical service was currently operated by a roster of of eight senior officer pilots to one junior officer.

It said that senior officers would normally be in command and governance roles in Casement Aerodrome in Dublin but had had to spend large periods away from their primary roles when operating the emergency aeromedical service, reflecting the lack of suitably qualified and experienced personnel.

RACO said the Department of Defence had argued that because senior civil servants did not get extra allowances for original work, then the emergency aeromedical service senior pilots should not either.

However, it said the adjudicator had found that the roles were not comparable and the senior pilots should receive the payments. It said the adjudicator's report had been accepted by the Minster for Defence Simon Coveney.

‘Long time coming’

RACO general secretary, Conor King said, "This result has been a long time coming, and the unfair denial of allowances owed to our members has been a source of great frustration and extremely damaging to morale. Using senior Air Corps pilots to conduct operations normally undertaken by junior officers takes them away from their leadership, management, instructional and mentoring roles in the Air Corps, impacts on governance, and increases organisational risk. Without these senior pilot officers, the emergency aeromedial service and the Garda Air Support Unit provided by the Air Corps would have collapsed, and it is a testament to the loyalty of our members that they continued to put themselves in harm's way to ensure service delivery for the people of Ireland who needed their help."

RACO said it was also seeking the payment of allowances for senior pilots operating the Garda Air Support Unit who had not received these since 2016.