Allowances are 35% of prison pay bill

More than a third of total pay to prison officers is made up of a “plethora” of allowances, the head of the Department of Justice has said.

Secretary General Brian Purcell said €85 million (35%) of the €243m prison pay bill is comprised of allowances. Addressing the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, he said there were 64 separate allowances.

Mr Purcell said 13 new allowances were introduced in 2005 as part of an agreement on a system to replace the €65m overtime bill.

While the agreement ended overtime, the replacement rostering system (called the annualised hours system) and the new allowances meant the net saving was €30m, he said.

Independent deputy Shane Ross described the allowance system — and the administrative workload it imposed — as “crackers” and “bonkers”.

Mr Purcell acknowledged it was a “mammoth, difficult and complex” system to administer. But he said he was “willing to pay the price” as the payoff was €30m in savings.

Fine Gael deputy Kieran O’Donnell said the figures showed that the majority of prison officers received an average of eight allowances, but said most of them seemed to be allowances for what should be core pay.

John Clinton, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, said they were precluded after the “torturous negotiations” for the new rostering system from putting in a pay claim under the national wage agreements. Instead they receive an operational allowance, for what was core pay.

Fine Gael deputy Eoghan Murphy said that the midpoint pay for a basic grade prison officer was €35,500, but that with allowances, it came to €62,000.

He claimed that that was more than a pilot made and it seemed to be “excessive”.

Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald said €62,000 was a “good” wage, but was not “excessive”, and pointed out that TDs received €92,000.

Like most deputies, she argued that the majority of the allowances should be included in core pay.

Mr Purcell said the reforms in the system have been achieved at a time when committals to prisons have “gone through the roof”, with a 30% increase in the numbers in custody since 2005. He said at the same time the numbers of staff have fallen by 300, or roughly 10%.

He said an additional raft of 30 allowances currently being paid to Department of Justice staff, including gardaí and prison officers, were now under review.

This follows the 17 allowances which have already been eliminated for new recruits to the Prison Service.

He said the second raft of possible cuts followed instructions from the Department of Public Expenditure that it was looking for further savings. Mr Purcell said the deadline for the current review was next February.