THE GOVERNMENT is to carry out a review of pay levels of senior civil servants, it emerged yesterday.
The move follows on from the announcement last month by Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin that pay rates at the top level in commercial State companies were to be examined.
Details of the pay review for senior Civil Service staff were revealed in additional information relating to a parliamentary question not provided in the Dáil and published yesterday on the Oireachtas website.
The statement, which was drawn up by the Department of Finance in response to a question tabled by Independent TD Shane Ross to Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said: “The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is currently examining the salary levels of certain Civil Service grades.”
The Department of Finance yesterday declined to set out the grades which would be affected by the review, other than saying that these would be at senior level.
In general, the phrase “senior level” refers to those at assistant secretary and above.
Unions representing staff up to principal officer level in the Civil Service have all signed up to the Croke Park agreement which guarantees that pay will not be cut further until at least 2014.
Meanwhile, the country’s largest public service union, Impact, told TDs in a letter that it accepted that “all the reforms agreed under Croke Park have to be implemented if the deal is to sustain”.
It said this included “controversial issues which have yet to be implemented, like the standardisation of terms and conditions of employment within sectors”.
The Government is looking at the standardisation of leave arrangements across the public service following the collapse of moves to reform privilege-day entitlements for civil servants.
Impact had opposed moves by management in local authorities to introduce a standardised working week and leave arrangements.
Impact general secretary Shay Cody told TDs that public service numbers had fallen by 16,000 in the last two years, and that this was now generating annual savings of €900 million.
Separately yesterday the head of the implementation body for the Croke Park deal in the health sector said the deal had generated “hundreds of millions of euro” in savings.
Pat Harvey said while it would be wrong to disclose the contents of the first official report submitted by the Department of Health on savings made in the health sector since the deal was ratified last summer, he could confirm “hundreds of millions” had been saved. He was happy with the progress made so far, but believed there was a lot more to be done.
However, other sources in the health services told The Irish Times that the report would detail savings of about €100 million. These would include net savings of €56 million from the recent voluntary redundancy/early retirement scheme in the HSE, over €30 million from reforms of the use of agency personnel and €5 million from a new deal with medical laboratory staff. Other savings would come from the centralisation of the processing of medical cards.
All Government departments have been asked to produce reports on savings generated under the Croke Park deal. These findings will feed into an overall review of the agreement to be carried out by the national implementation body for the deal.
Mr Howlin said the progress report on the Croke Park agreement should be ready for publication “within a week or so”. The report would be “a staging-post in a big objective”, which was the comprehensive spending review.