The increases proposed as part of the draft national pay agreement, combined with the benchmarking awards, were "simply too much" and were going to prove difficult for local authorities, the manager of one local authority has warned.
Mr Martin Nolan, county manager for Kerry, said the draft national pay agreement needed to be reworked "to provide an affordable and better sustainable agreement for the future".
A better timescale to separate the impact of the two increases on local authorities was needed, he said, and the period of benchmarking should be extended.
Local authorities were in a different situation from the rest of the public service sector as it was they, not the Exchequer, which would have to pick up the benchmarking costs.
All local authorities would have to look seriously at the proposals. "We are a different sector from the rest of the public sector in that we are expected to raise this money ourselves," Mr Nolan said.
Kerry County Council and each of the town councils in Kerry were having difficulty adopting budgets for 2003. These included the first 25 per cent of the benchmarking awards, but the other elements of the proposed national pay agreement would only begin to impact on the council budget in 2004, Mr Nolan said.
The percentages proposed under the national pay agreement of 7 per cent, combined with the additional increase of 8.9 per cent in the benchmarking award, were "simply too much", he told councillors.
It was important that local authorities looked now at how they were going to fund the increases rather than wait until 2004 when they would fully impact, he said.
"The draft national pay increases proposed are such that we will have severe financial difficulty in implementing the agreement if those figures are finally ratified by all parties," Mr Nolan said.