Minister ‘hopeful’ progress will be made with unions

Legislation will be introduced to help achieve savings if unions do not reach agreement within weeks, a Government minister indicated today.

The Coalition is looking at a combination of pay cuts, the indefinite freezing of increments and changes to premium and overtime payments for frontline public service staff if there is no agreement with unions on reducing the public service pay and pensions bill following the collapse of the proposed Croke Park II agreement.

Speaking this afternoon, Labour Minister of State at the Department of Transport Alan Kelly said he was "hopeful" the Labour Relations Commission's Kieran Mulvey would find scope for progress but warned that in the event of there not being any agreement the introduction of legislation would "motivated" by a desire "to protect" the lower paid.

The Government is insisting that the planned €1 billion reduction in the public service pay and pensions bill over the next three years must be delivered and has asked the chief executive LRC to report back early next month on whether he believes a deal can be reached with unions.

“I’m hopeful something comes out of it. The total amount of €300m isn’t going to change. We want to see this done by consensus. That is the right approach,” he told RTE radio.

“It has to be found it’s not going to change”

A key element of the Government's proposals for any new legislation, reported yesterday by The Irish Times, would be a pay cut for those earning over €65,000. Any such pay cut would be permanent with no scope for potentially regaining the money for those earning up to €100,000 as there was in the Croke Park II proposals which were rejected by unions in recent weeks.

“The €300m has to be found. We want to see it done by consensus - it is the best way of doing business. We want to hear what the unions are going to say in the coming days, see what suggestions they have, I think that is important,” Mr Kelly said.

He said the Government would listen to what the unions have to say and will “take that on board and then decisions will have to be made.”

In the event the unions do not agree to a new deal, Mr Kelly said, “We haven’t reached that stage, I personally hope that it doesn’t get to that stage. If it does, it’ll have to be dealt with.”

“If it comes down to the point where the Government has to legislate to reduce the pay bill…Then it will do so in order to protect the front line public services and also to protect, dare I say it, the lowest paid public and civil servants.”

“If we have to legislate, if and I hope we don’t, we will be motivated about protecting lower paid civil servants and protecting front line services,” he insisted.