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.

According to the latest analysis of public sector pay rates prison officers are the highest earners, receiving an average of €1,252 per week or €65,000 a year.

Across the public sector, the average pay increase over the last three years was 12.2% from €867.62 per week in March 2006 to €973.04 in March this year.

The CSO figures come just days before the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure, An Bord Snip Nua, presents its final report on public sector expenditure to Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan. The report is believed to recommend 400 spending cuts totalling €5 billion.

Commenting on the CSO report and the impending An Bord Snip Nua report on public sector expenditure, Mark Fielding, the chief executive of business lobby group ISME, said public service costs needed to be curtailed.

“Unbelievably, as unemployment soars, employment in the public sector increased by 3,000 in the 12 months to March,” said Mr Fielding.

Mr Fielding went on to suggest that a failure by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan to make the An Bord Snip report public would be an abdication of responsibility.

However, the country’s largest solely public sector union, IMPACT said the increase in public sector numbers was a strong indication of the soaring demand for public services.

The union’s general secretary Peter McLoone said: “A growing population of older people has ongoing health and welfare needs, and a growing number of newly unemployed people need services we all hoped they would never need.”

An Bord Snip’s report will be handed to the Finance Minister by Friday but it is unlikely to become public until mid-July.

Sources have suggested that among the recommendations are a reduced Garda force, the means testing of child benefit and welfare cuts of up to €1.5bn. The number of public sector workers also looks set to fall by up to 30,000.