Civil servants are to receive pay increases of up to 10 per cent next month, following the publication yesterday of a review of their work.
It found that the State's 34,500 civil-service staff were delivering the productivity improvements agreed in return for the benchmarking pay increases.
As a result, all civil servants will receive half of their overall benchmarking rise, plus a basic increase of 3 per cent, on January 1st. The review was carried out by an independently chaired performance verification group, which expressed concern about the pace of change in some Government departments.
Overall, however, it said it was impressed at the efforts that had been made to improve services.
The benchmarking body recommended pay rises of between 8.5 per cent and 13.8 per cent for clerical staff in the civil service.
In return, they were required to sign up to a programme of modernisation and change and deliver stable industrial relations. Separate performance-verification groups were set up to monitor progress in the civil service, health, education and local-government sectors.
In his report to the Department of Finance, the chairman of the civil service group, Dr Dónal de Buitléir, said payment of the next phase of benchmarking was warranted for all departments.
There had been full co-operation with the maintenance of a stable industrial-relations environment and also with flexibility and ongoing change.
Progress on the modernisation agenda varied across departments, he said. Nevertheless, there was evidence of strong progress in many areas.
The delivery of services electronically, for example, had made a broad range of services more accessible and convenient for the public. "New methods of service delivery, changes to work practices and procedures, changes to traditional work-team structures and work patterns, will all contribute to delivering services in a manner which matches the expectations of the public," he said.
It was also clear that Departments were engaging in more consultation with customers and increasing the transparency of their services.
The group highlighted a range of specific improvements. It praised staff in the Department of Health, for example, for their willingness to take on tasks in addition to their existing workload.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment had improved customer service across a large number of areas, including reducing by 50 per cent the time it took to process work-permit applications.
Mr de Buitléir expressed concern, however, about the pace of changes in three areas: regulatory reform, efficient use of resources and human resources.
He also highlighted "significant variation" in the scale of modernisation programmes between different Departments and Government offices.
Mr Tom Geraghty of the Public Service Executive Union said the group's report showed that civil servants were delivering the changes required of them: "If we weren't, we wouldn't be getting the money."
Mr Seán Ó Riordáin, general secretary of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants, said the productivity changes being delivered might not "sound sexy" but there had been real improvements.
