Proposed pay increases to gardaí will not cost the taxpayer extra, the Government has said.
Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald and Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe have issued a statement welcoming the fact that the gardaí called off their planned strike.
The ministers said the Labour Court's pay offer was made within the framework of the Lansdowne Road agreement.
According to the statement, "the Ministers [...] restated their support for the Lansdowne Road Agreement as the centrepiece of public pay policy, noting that the Labour Court's recommendation was explicitly made within that framework."
Ireland's biggest trade unions are calling for a review of the agreement on public sector pay following last night’s garda pay deal.
Garda members agreed to defer their strike action last night while they consider a new pay deal worth around €3,600 each.
The deal - put forward by the Labour Court - also suggested new terms for annual leave and rent allowance to help with accommodation costs.
Today, some of the country’s biggest trade unions - IMPACT, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Association (INMO) and The Civil and Public Services Union (CPSU) - have reacted by questioning what the deal might mean for their own members.
Speaking to Newstalk, CPSU general secretary, Eoin Roynane said the proposed deal offered to the gardaí will need a collective response from all the public services unions covered by the Lansdowne Road Agreement.
“This is now something new. It is a new game in town and we need to decide how we are going to respond," he said.
Mr Roynane said CPSU members lose an average of €2,000 per year through working unpaid hours.
He said the €15 per annual leave day offered to the gardaí would be worth €330 a year to CPSU members at the bottom of the pay scale.
“If that is now something that we can recoup in the same way that the gardaí have done it, my members will be expecting that - or they will be expecting those hours to be rolled back,” he said.
“Clearly, either these are within the Lansdowne Road agreement and consequently can be negotiated for all public servants or the agreement has passed its sell-by-date and we need something different.”
The IMPACT trade union has issued a statement calling on the government to “make immediate arrangements to negotiate accelerated pay recovery for all public servants.”
“Yesterday’s Labour Court recommendation in the Garda dispute goes beyond the LRA and therefore represents a material change in the situation,” reads the statement.
“It is in the best interests of all public servants - the weakest as well as the strongest - that their pay and working conditions are negotiated collectively, and that pay restoration is achieved within a coherent agreement that applies to everyone who delivers public services.
However, Taoiseach Enda Kenny says the Garda pay offer, doesn't mean the Lansdowne Road pay deal can be changed:
Meanwhile, hundreds of secondary schools nationwide look set to close from Monday, as hopes fade for a resolution of the ASTI teachers' dispute.
Sinn Fein spokesperson on Education and Skills, Carol Nolan said the government’s “bully-boy and heavy handed” approach to the ASTI negotiations has resulted in schools around the country being forced into closure.
“The fact is that the imminent secondary school closures around the state on Monday are a result of Government intransigence and the Minister for Education and Skills needs to take responsibility,” she said.
“He has failed to negotiate effectively, he has failed to put appropriate contingency plans in place and he has failed the young people of this state who will suffer the most as a result of this dispute.”
