Political reaction:The Government has been accused of undermining the credibility of the benchmarking report on public service pay because it accepted massive pay increases for the Taoiseach, his Ministers and a range of highly-paid public officials.
The Fine Gael deputy leader and finance spokesman Richard Bruton said last night that the economy could not afford big pay increases at the top without any test of performance, while most public service workers were being asked to put up with no increase.
"The bankruptcy of this Government's approach to the public pay award system is highlighted perfectly by the fact that the Taoiseach awarded himself a pay award of €38,000 while the benchmarking report provides for almost no increases for public sector workers," said Mr Bruton.
Mr Bruton reiterated Fine Gael's view that the higher level pay awards should not proceed until matching improvements and efficiency gains were delivered.
"The stark contrast between the pay recommendations for bosses in the public service and the ordinary rank-and-file exposes the bankruptcy of this Government's approach to public service pay. The idea that bosses should get huge increases in pay without any regard to their performance is simply an untenable approach to pay settlements in an economy whose core challenge is to raise productivity and improve competitiveness," said Mr Bruton.
He said that private sector managers did get high rewards, but only when they confronted strategic challenges successfully and returned strong profits.
"Of course profit is not the target in the public sector, but that cannot mean that we jettison performance issues from public pay policy, as this Government has done."
Mr Bruton said that if social partnership was to have relevance in the years ahead, it must address itself to the challenge of how productivity in the public sector could be improved so that the country's ambitions could be delivered at a time of much scarcer public resources.
"The Irish private sector has successfully flattened its management structures, has become customer oriented, has developed a strong performance culture and has fostered innovation. However, the same wave of reform has not affected the public service to anything like a sufficient extent." The Labour Party deputy leader and finance spokeswoman Joan Burton also maintained that the atmosphere had been soured by the Government's handling of the report of the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Service.
"While appealing to workers to display wage restraint, the Government decided to accept massive increases for the Taoiseach and Government Ministers, simply deferring their implementation for 12 months.
"Departmental secretary generals received increases of up to €60,000 per annum under the same report, while earlier this week we learned that the Cabinet had approved massive increases for chief executives of commercial State bodies. On the very day on which the benchmarking body tells most public sector workers that there will be nothing for them, we learn that one semi-State company is seeking Government approval to double the salary of its chief executive, which would bring it to €650,000," she said.
Ms Burton said the report was likely to make it much more difficult to secure agreement on a new national agreement.
"If a new agreement is to be secured, it must ensure an adequate package of measures that will bring about a genuine improvement in the living standards of all workers, in both the public and private sectors," she said.
The Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said that he would discuss the report with his Government colleagues next week.
