Pay cuts may be reconsidered if reforms accepted

THE Government may be able to lift the threat of further pay cuts, if unions representing public servants agree to reforms, but there will be no reversal of cuts already made, Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe said yesterday.

Responding to news that schools could be shut down by teacher unions in the coming weeks in the escalating public service pay dispute, he insisted that their demands for the lifting of pay cuts already imposed was unrealistic.

“It’s definitively not going to happen. We can’t afford for it to happen. We have now regained credibility internationally in taking strong action to ensure that, as a country, we can survive. If we were to make any changes now, that would impact on our credibility abroad, our opportunity to borrow internationally at a rate that is reducing all of the time,” Mr O’Keeffe said. “If you get the efficiencies and flexibility that are needed, then it is quite possible that further pay cuts will not be necessary. The unions put quite a number of issues on the table recently, and those issues were very interesting. I felt there was an opportunity for us to make progress and I’d like to see those back on the table.”

Following criticisms yesterday from Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes of the Government walking away from the talks where those reforms were on offer, Mr O’Keeffe said what was proposed by the unions would not have met the savings required for the 2010 budget.

His comments came as the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland and Teachers’ Union of Ireland, scaled up their action, ordering members from yesterday not to carry out duties of retired teachers who had held middle-management positions, which remain vacant because of a Government ban on promotions.

Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) incoming general secretary Sheila Nunan said the four teacher unions, also including the Irish Federation of University Teachers, will decide in the coming weeks how their protest actions will be stepped up.

As vice-chair of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) public services committee, she said they could escalate current work-to-rule actions to work stoppages.

An ASTI spokesperson rejected Mr Hayes’ call yesterday for teacher unions to end industrial action, which has also included refusal to attend after-school parent-teacher meetings.