NORTHERN IRELAND civil service union NIPSA is threatening industrial action over plans by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to cut more than 450 jobs over the next three years.
The proposed job losses were revealed by the housing executive yesterday morning after NIPSA said 60 temporary staff had been dismissed in recent weeks, with no arrangements made to cover the work.
A spokeswoman for the housing executive said most of those who left were on 13-week contracts and that the cuts were inevitable: "The Housing Executive, in line with all other government departments and agencies, is required to make savings in our salary budget over the next three years.
"In order to help us plan for and manage these reductions we have been filling some posts on the basis of temporary contracts. These contracts are now coming to an end and around 60 staff have been released in the past weeks."
NIPSA has warned that 10,000 civil service jobs will go over the next three years in a £790 million efficiency drive. It held a protest outside a meeting of the Executive's management in Belfast yesterday when it was confirmed 450 more jobs would go over the next three years.
NIPSA's Bumper Graham said he believed the projected 450 job losses were "just the tip of the iceberg." He said Finance Minister Peter Robinson was implementing the public-sector cuts proposed by Gordon Brown as chancellor, and that many more jobs would be sacrificed in the efficiency drive which aims to raise £790 million.
He told BBC News: "You are talking about 10,000 people losing their jobs over three years.
"If this was in the private sector and a big factory was closing, politicians would be jumping up and down. But they are not and we condemn the whole Executive for failing the people of Northern Ireland."
Minister for Social Development Margaret Ritchie (SDLP) had announced plans to make co-ownership schemes more attractive for first-time buyers, allow public-housing tenants to buy a stake in their homes, introduce a not-for-profit mortgage rescue scheme, build an eco-village on the site of an army barracks outside Enniskillen and increase energy efficiency in new social houses.
The department said in a statement that "all of the plans set out by the Minister in her statement to the Assembly on the New Housing Agenda are still very much in place.
"In particular, there will be no relaxation of the targets for new social and affordable housing." ( Additional reporting: PA )