THOUSANDS OF public sector jobs are to be cut between this year and 2015 under a massive public sector reform programme unveiled by the Government yesterday.
In addition to 23,500 jobs being culled, the controversial decentralisation programme, on which millions had already been spent, is being scrapped.
Under the plan presented by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin, the Government is to slim down staffing levels in the public service to 282,500 within four years in a move which it maintained would generate gross savings of €2.5 billion on its pay bill. There will be no compulsory redundancies.
There are currently just under 300,000 people working in the public service.
Reducing staffing levels to the extent planned could cost the Government up to €300 million in additional pension costs every year, a spokesman for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform told The Irish Times last night.
The overall amount to be saved by the public service reform measures announced yesterday, which include merging quangos and reforming leave entitlements in the public service, has not been spelled out in the plan.
Some €44 million had been spent on acquiring sites for the planned decentralisation of public service offices and State agencies which will not now go ahead.
Drogheda in Co Louth will be one of the biggest losers from this. More than €10 million was spent by the Office of Public Works buying a site in Drogheda to provide a new headquarters for the Department of Social Protection, which will not now move to the town.
A total of 40 decentralisation projects on which work never started have been scrapped, while 30 others will remain. A further 20 will be reviewed again shortly by the Cabinet.
The Government has also announced that 48 State bodies, sometimes referred to as quangos, are to be abolished or merged next year, while a further 46 will be reviewed.
Opposition parties and health sector unions expressed concern about the effect the cuts will have on “frontline services”.