McDowell to slash soaring prison officer overtime pay
The statement will cause a clash with prison officers, whose overtime payments enable them to earn more than €1,100 a week.
Mr McDowell said he will tell the Prison Officers Association conference in Galway this morning that he doesn’t have the money to pay the overtime anymore.
“I will tell the Prison Officers Association on Wednesday that overtime must come to an end,” Mr McDowell said.
But the POA will respond that it’s not so simple and the Minister’s officials have yet to come up with promised proposals on changing their work practices to cut overtime.
Although just €49 million has been budgeted for overtime for the country’s 3,400 prison officers this year, the total bill may yet top last years €59m payout, when just €28m was allocated.
Earning more overtime than any other group in the public sector, the average prison officer takes home more than €18,000 in overtime pay a year. As the majority of the overtime is compulsory, some prison officers work more than 70 hours a week and actually earn more than a prison governor.
After Mr McDowell previously signalled that tackling the overtime issue was a priority, talks with the POA were initiated and consultants were appointed to prepare options for consideration.
Among the options being examined is a move towards annualised hours, whereby prison officers would work up to a set number of hours a year.
POA general secretary John Clinton said yesterday that despite being promised the package of proposed measures, the Department of Justice was still negotiating with the Department of Finance on the matter.
“You can’t just say stop. We are committed to trying to move the Prisons Service forward but we are not going to work at unsafe levels,” he said.
Speaking at a Progressive Democrats meeting on Monday night, Mr McDowell said funding for prison building was now going into overtime payments.
Money was poured into certain public services over the past number of years without demanding outcomes, he said, adding that Ireland had the highest ratio of overtime to basic pay for prison officers in Europe.
Mr McDowell said this country also had one of the highest ratios of prisoners to prison officers. “The simple fact is it is no longer on,” he said.
