The Government is to introduce an immediate 10 per cent reduction in the pay of all new entrants to the public service.
There is also to be an average annual reduction of 3,300 in the number of staff on the State payroll between 2011 and 2014. under the terms of the new four-year plan for economic recovery. This will mean that by 2014 there will be around 24,750 fewer staff in place than there were in 2008.
The four-year plan says savings arising from these reduced numbers of staff will have to be supplemented by significant savings generated as result of efficiencies and flexibility realised through reforms provided for in the Croke Park agreement.
This will involve reductions in the costs of overtime, allowances, staff substitution and temporary replacement and special payments across the public service.
It says the plan has been prepared on the basis that the Croke Park deal will produce tangible savings.
The plan says that overall the Government will achieve savings of €1.2 billion in the public service pay bill as a result of the various measures to be adopted including lower staffing levels, the Croke Park reforms and the reduced pay rates for new entrants.
The plan stresses that the commitments entered into by the Government under the Croke Park agreement, such as that there will be no further pay cuts or compulsory redundancies, “are dependent on the savings being delivered”.
The document states that in the future the public service will be smaller, with fewer organisations and fewer staff operating from a scaled-back number of locations with significantly reduced resources.
It says that as a result the public service will have to be more efficient and effective.
“The performance of organisations and individuals will have to be better managed and measured and there will have to be greater accountability for results. Staff mobility will have to be maximised and organisations will have to be restructured so that public bodies and individual public servants will be able to work together across sectoral, organisational and professional boundaries more efficiently."
The plan stresses re-deployment of staff will be a key element in mitigating the effect on services of the reduced numbers of staff.
“It will permit staff to be moved from activities which are of lesser priority, or which have been rationalised, reconfigured or restructured to areas of greater need. Re-deployment arrangements will apply in the Civil Service; in health and education sectors; in non-commercial State agencies and within individual sectors or between these sectors”.
In addition to the 10 per cent pay reduction for new public service staff, the four-year plan also states that all new personnel recruited to the public service will start on the minimum point of the pay scale.
The document also states that numbers of staff on the State payroll will continue to fall sharply in the years ahead. The current staffing complement of 307,500 will be reduced to 294,700 by the end of 2014.
As part of this reduction the number of gardaí will fall from 14,500 at present to 13,000 in 2014 while the number of personnel in the Civil Service will be cut 37,350 to 34,600.
The number of staff in the HSE will be reduced over the lifetime of the plan from the current level of 106,850 to 100,800 by 2014. However numbers employed in the education sector will rise by around 2,000 to 95,700 by 2014 “reflecting demographic pressures and in line with Government commitments”.
