O’Keeffe: Top civil servants’ wages to be cut

ALL senior public servants, including hospital consultants, will have to see cuts in their pay, a senior Government minister has said.

Pay levels in the rest of the public service will also have to be examined to see if wider cuts are justified, Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe stated.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has commissioned a review of top-level pay rates in the public sector. This is examining the salaries of those at “leadership levels”, such as ministers and secretaries-general of departments.

The review group is expected to submit its report next month.

But Mr O’Keeffe has signalled the salaries of many more high-level public servants will also have to be reviewed and subjected to “reverse benchmarking”.

Benchmarking was the process whereby the pay of public sector workers was compared with their private sector counterparts and increased as a result.

“Of course people at higher levels of the civil service and politicians will have to be subject to reverse benchmarking. But so will a whole plethora of other people,” said Mr O’Keeffe.

Controversially, Mr O’Keeffe said this included public hospital consultants, who have only recently agreed a new pay deal with the Government and would be fiercely resistant to cuts.

“The minister is of the view that everything’s on the table,” said a spokesman for Mr O’Keeffe.

It would be unfair to cut the pay of the civil servants covered by the review group and not examine other public servants who earn similar amounts of money, the spokesman said.

“You can’t look at the highest-paid civil servants in isolation. You have to look at others on their pay grade in the public service, such as doctors and consultants,” he said.

Mr O’Keeffe also said that pay in the wider public sector — ie lower-ranking staff — needed to be examined.

This is in keeping with the Bord Snip report, which called for “a new benchmarking process to address the pay of public servants generally… with a mandate to recommend reductions where the facts warrant this”. But the minister said any proposals to cut pay in the lower ranks would have to be “thoroughly family-proofed” and have “equity” at their core.

“We just have to ensure that whatever we bring in is equitable... Obviously, of course, the people who can least afford to pay must be protected as best we can.”

Meanwhile, Independent TD Jackie Healy-Rae said he would withdraw his support from the Government if a separate recommendation by An Bord Snip to cut the rural transport scheme was implemented. Cutting the scheme would save €11m, but Mr Healy-Rae said it was too important for rural communities to axe.

“I can’t vote for that because I can’t impose it on the old people of the country. I can’t,” he said.

“They can find €11m — they’ll have to find it from the banks, or the people that have the country robbed; they’ll have to find it some other way. But they can’t find it off the old people... I’ll tell you that now.”