Gardai will have to discuss productivity deals if they want to make progress in pay talks, the Minister for Justice told the Garda Representative Association yesterday.
Mr O'Donoghue restated the Government's position on the pay offer of 5.5 per cent, raised to 7 per cent last month.
To a frosty but silent reception Mr O'Donoghue said negotiators should return to the talks chaired by the former Department of Education official, Mr Declan Brennan. "The only way we can make progress is by engaging in discussions at this point on productivity."
Earlier the GRA told reporters to leave as delegates discussed options for industrial action. They were allowed to return in the afternoon.
Mr O'Donoghue said large pay increases for any single group would "inevitably run from one sector to the next". And if the Government agreed to an independent pay commission there would be a "pay free-for-all throughout the public sector".
The gardai "have a case" for a pay increase, he said. "But the protests of the kind which took place on May 1st present a potentially grave situation to the maintenance of stability."
The GRA president, Mr Michael Healy, said the association regretted the decision of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors to return to pay talks. "If the 8,500 members of our association . . . are not involved in such discussions how can anything be agreed?" he said.
Referring to the Belfast Agreement and its provision for prisoner releases, Mr O'Donoghue said the settlement would not have been possible without it.
"But I want to assure you that any persons who may be convicted in the future for the murder of Garda Jerry McCabe will not come within the ambit of the agreement." Mr Healy said gardai had been assured with the abolition of capital punishment that anyone convicted of the murder of a garda would serve "not 38, not 39, but 40" years.
"We must object in the strongest possible terms to the release of garda killers," Mr Healy said.