Watchdog reveals price of civil service sick leave

Sick leave in the civil service costs the country as much as €128m a year, an official report revealed today.

An investigation by the government’s public spending watchdog found six out of 10 civil servants were off ill at some stage during 2007.

The average woman working in state departments was absent 14 days while the average man was off for eight days.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) John Buckley said the direct cost to the taxpayer was €64m.

ut he pointed to a recent UK study which suggested the real cost, when knock-on effects are taken into account, could be twice as much.

The report stressed legitimate sickness leave is a normal part of employment but insisted civil servant managers need to intervene where it is “excessive and unwarranted”.

Stating that a 5% cut in sick leave would save the state at least €3.2m, the C&AG urged the civil service to start monitoring absences and comparing them with other departments.

The last time a similar review was carried out, more than 20 years ago in 1986, the average sick leave for a civil servant was just over seven-and-a-half days a year.

In 2007, the average was more than 11 days, but this rose to 16 days among clerical officers – three-quarters of whom took sick leave that year.