Average public sector pay hits €50,600

AVERAGE pay in the public service, excluding the health service, is now €50,600 – €12,000 more than the average industrial wage, Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures have revealed.

The CSO also reveals that in the period from March 2006 to March 2009 public sector pay rose by as much as 18% in some quarters and that the total number of public sector employees went up by almost 20,000 to 371,200.

However, the CSO also found that in the first three months of this year, the numbers employed in the sector had actually begun to decline with a drop of 2,900.