Fianna Fáil no longer the public sector’s best friend on pay

In 1980, the same year he told the country it was living way beyond its means, taoiseach Charles Haughey increased public sector pay by 34 per cent.

A particularly controversial pay rise at the time was the one awarded to teachers.

The Fianna Fáil government of the day had initially rejected a proposed increase from an independent arbitration board because it was considered too high.

However, as talks dragged on, Haughey instructed his minister for education, John Wilson, to give a pay increase over and above what was recommended by the arbitration board. After being made look like fools, the board resigned in protest.

The notion of Fianna Fáil as the friend of the public sector continued through the era of Bertie Ahern’s partnership agreements, from the late 1980s right up to the precipice of the crash.

Some party leaders, such as the late Brian Lenihan, wanted to dump social partnership as the economy nose-dived. But Brian Cowen believed it was a key party policy and should not be discarded lightly, though it was eventually discontinued.

Yet Fianna Fáil is now at one with Fine Gael on the importance of the Lansdowne Road agreement, negotiated in May 2015 and due to expire in September 2018, and how it must be maintained in the face of widening industrial unrest.

Stay the line

One senior Fianna Fáil TD said the party must be firm, even in the face of public- sector disquiet.

“We have to stay the line,” the TD said. “We got a bit of a hammering on water because it looked populist. And let that be a lesson to us. When guards go out on the street, we just have to say: It’s Lansdowne Road. Even when the local sergeant is calling to your door.”

Or, as another Fianna Fáil source put it: “We can’t promise them a thing. We do our best to placate them, but have always told them straight about Lansdowne.”

Fianna Fáil is signed up to the fiscal parameters of the coming years . The party knows that yielding on public pay would destroy any semblance of commitment to budgetary policy, as well as the image of responsibility it wants to convey as it rebuilds trust with the electorate and portrays itself as a government in waiting.

That is not to say, however, that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will forever see eye to eye on public pay during the lifetime of this Government.

While the public sector pay commission is stitched into the agreement between the two parties, they perhaps have different ideas of what they want it to become.

“Both sides recognised something had to be done,” said a Fianna Fáil source. “And as Fine Gael is anti- social partnership, this was the agreed compromise.”

Back door

Around the time of the talks on forming a minority government earlier this year, Fianna Fáil figures were clear that they believed the commission would be a way back to benchmarking against the private sector.

“I can’t see it being otherwise, as expectations are rising, not getting lower. But Brexit may limit the increases,” said a source.

The commission will also have to do more than simply examine what can be done, particularly if more pay claims are lodged in the months ahead.

“That’s when the commission being more than a desktop analysis comes in,” said a party source. “It will have to meet all unions, listen to their cases. Buy a bit of time so they feel part of the process.”

When asked if the commission was a route back to benchmarking, a senior Fine Gael source was emphatic. “Of course not,” he said. “[It is] a commission establishing facts and offering advice, not deciding policy or providing negotiating positions.”

Many who have negotiated the obstacle course of public sector pay believe demands for pay rises will not be held back until September 2018. But senior Fianna Fáil sources insist they must.

One pointed out that the expected available resources are likely to shrink as a result of Brexit, restricting any moves to yield in advance of the deal’s expiration.

Whatever about timing, the differences between FF and FG will likely be over the character and shape of what comes after Lansdowne Road – as well as the road to such a success or agreement.