Defence Forces told to continue paying border allowance

THE Defence Forces have been told to continue paying out about €5 million to staff working on the border even though a number of barracks there have closed and the threat of violence has greatly diminished.

More than 1,000 Defence Forces personnel, including officers, are paid €101 per week in border duty allowance, even though a large number of them have been relocated since their barracks were closed.

The allowance was set up in 1969 because duty in border posts involved extra responsibility, poor accommodation and disruption to personnel separated from their families. However, the Comptroller and Auditor General last year criticised the allowance, saying its payment should be stopped given that violence in the North had been stemmed.

However, when the matter was referred to independent adjudicator Kieran McGovern under the conciliation and arbitration scheme, he ordered it should still be paid to all soldiers who had been receiving it prior to February 2009. Anyone who joined border units after that will not receive it.

According to Industrial Relations News, Mr McGovern had heard evidence from the Department of Defence that the original sanction for the allowance only applied for the “duration of special arrangements” to cope with the border situation, which had ceased at least 10 years ago.

However, PDFORRA, representing the ranks, argued that while the original justifications for the allowance had disappeared, they had been replaced with new ones. It said that given the length of time involved, the allowance was “clearly intended as a permanent payment”.

“Over the years the earned value of the allowance to the state cannot be overstated and in that sense the inherent service to the state, as manifested in the payment of the pensionable allowance, should not now be somehow overlooked or arbitrarily discounted – at the very least in an ongoing industrial relations context,” said Mr McGovern.