THE GOVERNMENT is seeking to reduce public service numbers overall by about 4,000 over the next two years, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has signalled.
In an answer to a written parliamentary question from Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton yesterday, the Minister said the Government wanted to see public service staffing levels reduced to 306,191 by the end of 2012.
This would represent a reduction of about 13,000 over the numbers on the payroll in March 2009 before the moratorium on recruitment and the incentivised early retirement and career break schemes were introduced.
Some 9,000 staff have already left the public service over the last year, leaving approximately 4,000 more posts to go over the next two years under the Government’s target.
The bulk of these posts are expected to be in the health service, where the incentivised early retirement scheme was not introduced last year.
This was because of a row with trade unions.
In the proposed new agreement on public service pay and reform, which was negotiated in Croke Park last month, the Government signalled that it wanted to reduce “substantially” the number of State employees over the coming years.
However, it gave no specific details.
Further information about the Government’s plans for reducing staffing levels has emerged in a number of employment control documents for different parts of the public service over the last fortnight.
Earlier this month, The Irish Times revealed that more than 1,500 posts in the health service are to go over the coming year.
The employment control document for the health service says that the Government wants to reduce health service staff numbers by 4,560 by the end of 2012.
Separately, the number of staff employed in the Civil Service is to fall by nearly 800 over the next two years.
The new employment control document for the Civil Service drawn up by the Department of Finance states that staffing levels will fall from 37,376 at the end of this year to 36,594 at the end of 2012.
Mr Lenihan yesterday in his parliamentary answer said that between 2009 and 2012 the Government wanted to see the number of gardaí reduced by 931 and members of the Defence Forces by 463.