STAFFING REDUCTIONS across the public services since the ratification of the Croke Park agreement last June will generate payroll savings of €200 million, the chairman of the group set up to oversee its implementation has said.
PJ Fitzpatrick said there were about 4,000 fewer staff in the public service at the end of last December than there had been six months earlier. This includes the 2,000 health service personnel who left the Health Service Executive under the recent voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes.
The Government has said savings generated under the deal should be calculated from the time it was ratified by unions last June.
However, some of the Government’s figures for staff reductions in the public service date back to the introduction of the moratorium on recruitment in March 2009, a year before the Croke Park deal was agreed and 15 months before it was ratified.
The implementation body for the agreement last week set up a website setting out progress made under the deal to date.
Asked to elaborate on these findings, Mr Fitzpatrick said from the introduction of the moratorium in March 2009 to the end of December 2010 a minimum of 16,000 people had left the public service. These included those who departed under the HSE voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes. He said the Government had set a target that there should be 19,000 fewer staff on the payroll by the end of 2011 and that this meant a further 3,000 personnel would have to leave by the end of the year if the target was to be achieved. He said if the 19,000 figure was reached, a further reduction of 6,000 would have to be achieved by the end of 2014 under the plans.
He said the Government was seeking to generate savings of €1.3 billion on its public service pay bill by 2014 with €310 million to be achieved this year. The bulk of savings would come as a result of reductions in staffing levels. However, there would be contributions from other areas. For example the HSE believes reform of medical laboratory services will generate €5 million.
The chairman of the implementation body said that since last March numbers employed had fallen by 3,100, excluding the HSE staff who left under the recent schemes. He said that in the final six months of the year, since the deal was ratified, numbers fell by 1,997 in addition to the 2,000 who departed under the HSE schemes.
He said, based on an average salary of about €50,000, the reductions in numbers have generated the €200 million.