In spite of some camouflage, the pay deal now on offer to the gardai exceeds the Government's earlier and well-publicised resolution not to move beyond a figure of 7 per cent in order to settle the force's pay grievances. In reality, rank and file gardai are being offered a pay increase totalling 13.75 per cent, including a payment under Partnership 2000 and 2 per cent against future productivity. There will be some retrospection and additional productivity payments may arise under the Strategic Management Initiative.
There must be concern that pay increases of this order for the police will leach over into the public service as a whole. The proposed awards to the gardai come on top of a deal which effectively converted many of their expense allowances into reckonable pension entitlements, while overtime opportunities, though not as abundant as in the past, are still good. Average garda earnings, already higher than those of teachers and other comparable groups, will now stand ahead of the rest of the public service. It must be feared that the Government has decided to buy short-term peace with the guards at the possible expense of wage-containment throughout the public sector as a whole. With strong inflationary pressures growing within the economy, this is a high-risk policy.
The extent to which the Government's offer may have been influenced by the guards' threat to disrupt the Tour de France is unclear. Certainly it would not have added to the national image abroad to have the race compromised by illegal police action. But a high price is in contemplation - and not merely in cash terms. What is now to be offered to the gardai has not been secured through the normal channels of negotiation but by concerted action by rank-and-file officers who abandoned their duty in violation of their service oath and the terms of their employment. Every citizen knows individual gardai of the highest probity and standards and is happy to see them well-rewarded for their work. Unhappily, many gardai set aside those individual high standards in the collective dishonesty of the so-called "blue 'flu".
From the Garda Representative Association's point of view - which seems to place little store on these considerations - this is an unqualified victory. The proposed 2 per cent for future productivity nods in the direction of the State's initial stance that further pay rises would have to be linked to changed work practices. There is no indication of what the State - the taxpayer - is to get for its money. Productivity will only come meaningfully into the reckoning when further pay increases are under discussion within the context of the Strategic Management Initiative.
There has been talk of new technology and more efficient rostering under the heading of productivity. Little has been heard of eliminating some of the fundamental ills of the Garda Siochana of the 1990s - widespread double-jobbing, failure of members at all levels and ranks to live in the areas to which they are assigned and the persistence in many locations of an unhealthy siege mentality among members. Unless and until these are tackled, the Garda Siochana will continue to go through recurring cycles of crisis, of poor morale and discontentment. Throwing money at the guards every few years does not bring about the desired objective of a national police force which is efficient, well-respected and content with its conditions of service. In hindsight, the Government would have done better to go for a full commission of inquiry on the Garda Siochana. This way, the taxpayer looks set to pay all the costs and to get few gains.