Pay increases likely coming for Ireland’s most senior public servants

Ireland’s most senior public servants can look forward to pay rises after the Government decided to set up a special review group to make recommendations on salaries for top civil servants, semi-State bosses, judges and other senior officials.

The move follows recommendations made in a report which says the appointments system should be reformed and hiring processes should be completed more quickly.

Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe welcomed the report, compiled by a panel chaired by Donal de Buitléir, and said he would examine each of its 38 recommendations. Most of these are likely to be accepted, though some are expected to be rejected.

The Government decided to reject a recommendation to include ministers and political office holders in the scope of the pay review.

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The greatest focus is likely to come on the prospect of pay increases for the best-paid public servants, though this will not happen until a new body is established, which will require legislation. Previous reports have generally recommended widespread pay increases for the grades concerned.

Asked why senior officials needed special pay deals rather than being catered for in broader public sector agreements, Mr Donohoe told reporters that when it came to the semi-State sector, “the private sector context for the operation of our semi-State bodies had completely changed”.

Best people

He suggested that the private sector was now paying much higher salaries for comparative posts and if pay was not increased “we would end up in the situation where we wouldn’t have the best people doing the right work for our country”.

When it was suggested that this covered only a handful of posts, whereas the pay review will cover hundreds in the public sector, Mr Donohoe said that in the case of “a small number of posts” it was needed to have the input of the new group to set pay rates.

The report recommends including the following posts in the pay review: political office-holders; assistant secretary and above posts in the Civil Service and equivalents; the judiciary; chief executive and national director posts in the HSE; chief executives of non-commercial State-sponsored bodies; president and senior executive posts in universities and technical universities; local authority chief executives; senior ranks in An Garda Síochána (assistant commissioner upwards); senior ranks in the Defence Forces (brigadier general upwards); the Comptroller & Auditor General; medical consultants; and such other posts, inclusive of individual posts, as it may be asked to examine from time to time.

The report also recommends that at the conclusion of their term, secretaries general of government departments should be offered either a year’s pay or continued employment at assistant secretary grade. Secretaries general are currently paid up to €250,000 a year.