PUBLIC SERVICE staff numbers fell by 10,000 in the period from January 2009 to the end of March this year, according to figures supplied by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan.
The total at the end of 2008 was 319,092, but by the end of last year this had dropped to 309,751 and at the end of the first quarter of 2010, the figure was 309,146.
The biggest drop was in local authorities, where numbers fell from 35,008 in 2008 to 32,044 in 2009, a decline of 2,964. In the same period, Civil Service staff went down 1,997 from 39,313 to 37,316.
In the education sector, staff declined from 94,663 to 92,984, a drop of 1,679. The decline in the health sector was 1,272 or from 111,025 in 2008 to 109,753 in 2009. The staff total in non-commercial State-sponsored bodies fell from 12,433 to 11,760 or a fall of 673. Defence Forces numbers fell by 529, from 11,265 to 10,736.
There was a 7,000 increase in 2008, mainly concentrated in education, with almost 2,000 extra teachers and 1,300 special needs assistants. There were increases of 7,600 in 2007; 12,400 in 2006 and 7,300 in 2005. The figures emerged in a written response to a parliamentary question from Labour’s environment spokeswoman Joanna Tuffy, who commented: “Ten thousand is a huge reduction, especially in light of fact that up until then there had been an average increase of several thousand a year.
“Such increases were from a relatively low base, and general government employment in Ireland is relatively low among OECD countries. It is significantly less than the level of public employment in Norway, Sweden, France and Belgium. We are in danger of having a weaker public service, with services stretched and staff under more pressures.
“Those retirements and the moratorium on replacing staff that leave the public service also means fewer job opportunities for our school leavers and graduates, many of whom may have no alternative but to emigrate when they could have been contributing to public service in this country,” Ms Tuffy said.
In 2009, 1,729 applicants were approved for the incentivised scheme for early retirement, 950 of whom were civil servants. A further 800-plus staff availed of the incentive career break scheme. Most of these left in 2009. Many staff on that scheme had been job sharing, reducing the headcount to 400 whole-time jobs.