CROKE PARK AGREEMENT:PJ Fitzpatrick is the man charged with the mammoth task of implementing the Croke Park deal - and with the onerous four-year Budget looming, he has his work cut out.

JUST OVER three months ago, the former chief of the Courts Service (and before that the Eastern Regional Health Board) was asked to take charge of implementing the most ambitious attempt ever to speedily transform the cash-strapped public service affecting over 300,000 employees.

PJ Fitzpatrick – with four decades of varied public-service management experience – exploded from the starting blocks and has since been engaged in an intensive series of high-level meetings with departmental secretaries general, union chiefs, senior public sector managers and industrial-relations practitioners.

After years of expanding budgets and mushrooming agencies, Fitzpatrick’s job is to get these organisations – from schools and local councils to state bodies, welfare offices and hospitals – into reverse thrust without too much adverse impact on public services.

Fitzpatrick knows the challenge ahead. Having survived earlier recessions and cutbacks, he suspects there may be a lack of senior managers with such experience. After 15 years of seemingly ever-expanding budgets, it can be hard for some managers to grasp the nettle of implementing cuts.

His task is not made easiers by two decades of “social partnership” that effectively smothered many earlier attempts to secure major efficiencies and value for money.

The initial omens for implementation were not good, with a leisurely approach taken towards preparing the “action plans”. Then the unions sought to have four representatives on the seven-seat national implementation body, rather than the three seats specified in the 26-page pay and reform agreement. The remaining three members are senior public civil service managers.

The pay side was dealt with by a jobs guarantee in return for a four-year pay freeze, following on pay cuts and a pension levy last year which reduced average pay scales by 14 per cent.

The reform side, involving dramatic changes in working rosters and attendance patterns, as well as increased mobility and streamlining of administration using shared services, is the focus of the implementation body which is assisted by union-management sectoral implementation sub-groups.

Fitzpatrick is upbeat and says that the ICTU having four representatives has not presented any problems, and the seven members have been both constructive and co-operative so far. “There is a very high level of trust and openness among the people on the implementation body. But nobody underestimates the scale of the task ahead. In terms of complexity, different sectors have different challenges. We need to transfer that openness and transparency down to other bodies and if we can do that we will be well on our way.”

On the delay in finalising some of the overall reform plans, he says: “We certainly would have liked to have had all the action plans in by the end of September, but they were in . The month of August with its associated holidays intervened, and some departments were also keeping an eye on what will be in next month’s Budget estimates.

He points out that the agreement must been seen in tandem with the proposed four-year budgetary strategy, and cannot be assessed as a simple cost-savings initiative to produce a pre-specified figure. “The Croke Park agreement does not exist in isolation from the Budget. It will be a key enabler for departments and agencies to cope with significantly less money and significantly fewer people over the next four years.”

Looking ahead to likely queries about the impact of the agreement at its first anniversary at the end of March 201I, Fitzpatrick comments that “it is a four-year agreement, and obviously not everything is going to be achieved in year one”.

“But things are happening and, for instance, there are now 11,000 to 12,000 less people in the public service than there were in March 2009. As far as we can see, there has been no fall in productivity and there has not been a series of industrial actions so already fewer people are doing more.” He acknowledges that with certain posts exempt – such a teachers and child social workers – the numbers have not reduced as much as might have been possible.

He gives the example of the redeployment of civil servants into supporting social welfare offices, and the fact that most Fás staff will be transferred to different departments. “This year, the pay cut will be reduced by €1 billion, and the pensions levy has contributed about €800 million, while the recruitment moratorium provided a further €300 million. So we are looking at a contribution of about €2 billion so far.”

The record of securing gains from the benchmarking process was less than impressive and doubts remain as to whether public service managers have the skills and ambition to secure dramatic restructuring.

“There is no doubt that this agreement is going to challenge management and unions as never before. The key for senior managers is going to be energising and motivating middle managers and frontline managers. In saying that, I am not just talking about admin managers, but also nurse-managers, school principles and managers in various professional grades. For this to really work, the middle and frontline managers are going to have a critical role, as this is all going to have to happen on the ground. There is going to have to be meaningful engagement between local managers and union representatives to make it happen quickly.”

Where this hoped-for harmonious change is not achieved, the agreement provides for referrals to the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) and Labour Court – paths well-trodden by public service employers and unions, sometimes as a delaying mechanism.

“We would certainly hope that the number of disputes that would reach that stage would be small. If this agreement is going to succeed, then every change proposal cannot be the subject of a referral, and issues will have to be resolved locally.”

Fitzpatrick points out that protracted disputes would wreck the shaky public and political confidence in the Croke Park terms and aspirations, adding that the LRC is already trying to cope with record numbers of referrals from the private sector.

Some of the trades unions, especially representing nurses, gardaí and second-level teachers, are in a strange position whereby their members have rejected the agreement but they seem to be taking a part in implementing its terms. For example, the main nursing union, the INMO, is sitting on the health sector sub-group despite their trenchant criticism early in the summer.

On the issue of management prerogatives, Fitzpatrick states that public service managers have as much legislative freedom to remove

underperforming staff as in the private sector – even if they do not have a role in rewards or the terms and conditions which are negotiated nationally. “Maybe people have not grasped these changes, and they have the tools now, and may have to use them – the pressure is on underperformance”.

In his experience, the state agencies that have introduced good performance management are the ones operating most efficiently and with more employee engagement and less employment disputes.

Good managers are already implementing changes with their staff, using clear and effective communications and building trust. Fitzpatrick points to a recent arrangement in HSE West where staff, eventually, agreed to work six or seven hours less per week to salvage jobs.

He also cites past transformations such as the use of online customer interaction with the Revenue Commissioners and motor-tax processing, adding that the second-home levy introduced last year was effectively applied through good payment systems adopted by local authorities.

From his experiences in the Courts Service, Fitzpatrick identifies the removal of promotion by seniority as the most effective human resource change in recent years which allowed more able employees to rise through the ranks more quickly.

“We had no problems with the unions over it and I cannot see why it cannot be extended to other parts of the public service and be allied to more open recruitment,” he explains. However, he’s tempers any ambition for such a move in a wider context by noting that such changes are not part of the Croke Park arrangements.

Croke Park Critics

IN September, within six months of the Croke Park deal being struck and as the bank-bailout costs soared to €40 billion and the public finances deteriorated further, vocal critics of the deal soon emerged. They were led by Willie Slattery (below), the former chair of IBECs financial services group and senior Central Bank regulator, who called for the scrapping of the public service reform agreement and for 30,000 public service jobs to be axed.

He was probably not the best person to lead the charge, given that the employers’ body had unilaterally abandoned “social partnership” and his erstwhile colleagues in Financial Services Ireland (FSI) included some of the most discredited senior bankers in the state.

When he was FSI chairman in 2003, Slattery lamented: “I regret to say that there is a palpable sense of unease within the financial sector in Ireland about what is becoming an over-regulated business environment.”

Health on  the frontline

THE most dramatic workplace changes are planned for the health sector, with new shift patterns, longer core working hours and increased weekend working. Any adverse impact on family commitments or earnings have to discussed and agreed directly with employees, and if agreement is not reached it will be passed to a binding arbitration process yet to be introduced.

Whether health managers have to ability to meet these requirements will be key to the success of the process. Last May, some managers expressed the wish that the unions would not back the reforms, as they felt unable to deliver their side. Just this month, union leaders have criticised managers for not coming up with clear customer-oriented proposals.