MacGill summer school:The jury is still out on whether benchmarking pay awards to State workers, now costing €1.3 billion annually, have helped to improve public services, a leading trade unionist has acknowledged.
Former Irish Congress of Trades' Union (Ictu) president Peter McLoone said: "It is clear that the public perception is that the modernisation agenda has delivered little in terms of services."
Speaking at the MacGill summer school in Glenties, Co Donegal, Mr McLoone said public services were now under "an increasingly critical spotlight".
"The choice for unions - particularly public service unions - is to let those who care more for private profit than for public service to set the agenda, or to boldly set it ourselves.
"Campaigns to defend public services must start from the premise that our strongest allies are the people we serve," he told a debate on the need for public service reform.
Mr McLoone is general secretary of Impact, the State's largest public sector union.
He said there remained a strong culture of support for public provision throughout this island, where ordinary people have no stomach for the unfettered free market approach.
But he did not think that would continue unless the consumer saw a "vast improvement" in some areas.
Benchmarking was introduced to end catch-up pay claims by civil and public servants, create parity with those in the private sector, and reward State workers for changes in work practices.
Asked if the payments had improved services, he replied: "I think the jury is out. The purpose of benchmarking in the first instance was to change the old system and to bring peace and to create the conditions in which one could engage with a debate about modernisation that linked modernisation to pay. It is clear from the public response to the report over the last number of years that that connection has failed. We have not made that connection. The consumer has a much simpler view about what they expect, and what they feel they are entitled to from public services."
Reform plans had often run into difficulties because they were presented to public servants, or perceived by them, as changes that were driven by management solely to cut costs.
"It follows [ that] trade unions have traditionally been slow to take the initiative on reform in a practical and proactive way," said Mr McLoone, who completed his term as Ictu president earlier this month.
"Unions have a responsibility to genuinely engage with debates about better quality, more responsiveness, and increased flexibility in service provision if we are to retain public belief in our own bona fides. That means our campaigns must go beyond protecting the status quo and restating what we are against," he warned.
Meanwhile, Cormac Lucey, the former special adviser to the former minister for justice, Michael McDowell, said the spotlight should be turned more often on to the performance of unelected public officials, not just politicians.
Few people could name the head of the Department of Health's Ppars computer system that has cost €200 million, or who headed the Revenue when it failed to collect Dirt tax.
"There are outstanding civil servants. But there are weak, venal and lazy public servants who are shielded by the reluctance of the trades' union movement to have transparent accountability of such people.
"Unlike the private sector, the Government is a weak employer, up against entrenched opponents, and that gives public sector workers an advantage over those who work in the private sector," he said.
