Public service pay deal: Paying a hefty price for some industrial peace

The new public pay deal will buy the Government another three years of industrial peace. But the pacification of around 300,000 workers in the public sector has come at a cost, and a rather hefty one at that, says Elaine Loughlin.

The total price tag lies at €887m up to 2020, and while Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe had claimed before the talks he had an overall price in his head, yesterday he wouldn’t signal if the final tally was above or below that marker.

But he did concede that the deal had been arrived at “after a period of very difficult negotiation between my department and the public sector union movement.”