THE NUMBER of staff employed in the public service fell by about 500 in the second quarter of the year, the Government has told the EU-IMF.
It is understood that the figures show that at the end of June, there were just under 303,000 personnel in the public service. This is a reduction of 2,500 since the start of the year.
The previous government had set a target last year to reduce public service numbers to 302,000 by the end of 2011.
However, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin has forecast that the final figure for the year will be below 300,000.
The new Government has set more ambitious plans for reducing numbers but has not yet set out specific targets for each year.
Since 2009 there has been a moratorium in place on recruitment in the public service while about 2,000 staff left the health service under schemes introduced last year.
Mr Howlin has signalled that public service staff are now facing “their very last opportunity” to retire on pensions not affected by the pay cuts introduced over the last year or so.
In an interview, he also indicated that the Government was not in favour of a new voluntary redundancy scheme in the public service in the immediate term.
The Government has set a deadline of the end of February next year for the ending of the “grace period” under which pensions for retiring staff – which traditionally have been based on current pay levels – would be determined by the pre-pay cut salary scales.
In an interview with Industrial Relations News he signalled this “grace period” would not be extended further and that after the deadline, reduced pension levels would apply based on the post-pay cut salaries.
The Minster expressed confidence that the Government could achieve its target of reducing public service numbers by between 18,000 and 21,000 by 2014 and a further 4,000 the following year without the immediate need for a voluntary severance offer.
“That is an ambitious target given the scale of people who have left to date, but it’s an achievable target.”
He said he hoped sufficient numbers of public servants would avail of what he said was the “very last opportunity” to avail of retirement with a pension based on salary before the pay cuts.
Separately, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has instructed that staff who intend to retire before the pension “grace period” deadline at the end of February must give three months’ notice.
In a circular sent to personnel managers, it said that it was anticipated that there “could be a large increase in the number of retirements of staff in the run-up to the end of the grace period”.
“In order to protect services it is critical that management in the Civil Service have knowledge of the numbers of staff retiring and the business areas that will be affected by potentially large-scale departures.”