PUBLIC SERVANTS should not get pay increments worth €400 million this year and the pay pause under the social partnership deal due to expire in September should be extended, Fine Gael has said.
State employees normally get a cost-of-living increase every year, along with another payment based on the number of years served.
Teachers, for example, take 25 years to reach the top of their pay scale.
Fine Gael spokesman on enterprise Leo Varadkar said the wider public did not realise that the public pay bill would rise substantially this year because of the cost of increments even though social partnership pay increases have been deferred.
“We think that a pay freeze should mean a pay freeze. Annual increments are still being paid. That should stop, so should the payment of bonuses and emoluments,” he said.
However, Mr Varadkar, who expressed some doubt that the Government would actually cut public servants’ pay, said that low to middle-earners, such as teachers, gardaí and nurses, should not be affected.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny yesterday refused to follow in the footsteps of Labour leader Eamon Gilmore in calling for an early general election.
Mr Gilmore insisted earlier this week that the public mood demanded a change in leadership as the country risks sliding further into a recession worse than that of the 1980s.
Mr Kenny said yesterday a general election “is going to happen in any event”. Cuts in wages and jobs in the public service were now clearly part of the agenda aimed at curtailing the deterioration in the public finances, he added.
When asked if he and Fine Gael supported moves to cut wages and jobs in the public sector, he said clearly cuts of some description were now on the agenda, but there had been no clarity from the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste about what these cuts would be or when they are due to be implemented.
Mr Kenny said there would be a great deal of political activity this year with upcoming local and European elections. “It [a general election] is not due for approximately three years. This year, you are faced with local and European elections, two by-elections and a Lisbon referendum. There is a great deal of political activity in there and it remains to be seen whether this Government have the capacity to deal with any or all of those issues,” he said.
Mr Kenny was in Limerick yesterday to meet party TDs from Limerick, Clare, Tipperary and Kerry to discuss the fallout from the Dell jobs announcement last week.