I won’t pretend services won’t take hit: Howlin

BRENDAN HOWLIN said he would not “pretend” that frontline services won’t be hit by a cut of 23,500 in public sector workers.

But the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform said each department will have to monitor the changes to prevent problems or deal with them as they arise.

Exactly where the staff will be cut and a timeline for doing so will be outlined at the time of the budget on December 6.

Mr Howlin said there would be no compulsory redundancies and the changes can be made without breaching the terms of the Croke Park Agreement. He said savings of €2.5 billion per year will be made to the public sector pay bill by 2015 and, combined with the pension levy on wages, the bill will be €3.5bn a year less than it was in 2008.

From its peak in 2008 until the end of 2015, the number of public service workers will have dropped by 37,500 or 12.5%. “That’s an extraordinary reduction,” the minister said.

He said the figure is “smack within the middle” of the Programme for Government commitment to cut numbers by between 18,000 and 21,000 by 2014 and by a further 4,000 to 282,500 by 2015.

Mr Howlin said the public sector had “downsized very radically in the last couple of years” and the involvement of the public service personnel in “avoiding impact on the frontline has ensured we have had, by and large, a smooth transition”.

Asked what the impact on frontline services might be, he said: “I don’t want for one second to pretend the reform agenda that we have — as radical as it is and as broad ranging as it is — won’t cause problems or give anomalies that we have to address.

“That’s why we have an office in my department and we have sectoral offices across Government to deal with issues as they arise as best we can.”

But Sinn Féin described the announcement as “an attack on frontline services” already “decimated” by the recruitment embargo.

Its spokesperson on reform, Mary Lou McDonald, said the embargo has been “deepening the crisis in our health services”.

She said “crude job cuts” were being applied “with no concern for the experience, or indeed the skill sets that might be lost, causing further damage to service provision”.

Mental Health Ireland said further cuts in health staff are “untenable” and the mental health document, A Vision for Change, could not be implemented if more staff are lost in the area.

United Left Alliance TD Richard Boyd Barrett branded the proposals a “jobs destruction charter”.

Fianna Fáil said the Government is adding to the numbers already out of work.

“No provision has been included to ensure adequate staff numbers, such as nurses, are retained in key areas which should be prioritised under this plan,” said spokesman Sean Fleming.

Holiday boost

THOUSANDS of public servants will get a one-off holiday boost to compensate for bringing their annual leave to 32 days.

Under a new arrangement, public servants will no longer be entitled to “privilege days” or free days off at Christmas and other holidays — or local leave for festivals or races.

To compensate, they will get a once-off holiday, to be taken at their own discretion, worth one-and-a-half times the annual loss. Holiday entitlements will be reduced to 32 days a year for those currently entitled to more than that. Workers now getting below this will have their days capped at 30.

The reforms do not affect arrangements where additional leave was granted while carrying out shift work or where time off in lieu systems were in place.