National agreement - Taxpayers deserve value for money

The proposed new national agreement, Towards 2016, overwhelmingly received the endorsement of the biggest public service union in the country with the announcement yesterday that Impact had voted for it.

The results of a ballot of its 55,000 members showed an 80%-20% majority in favour of the new agreement, which is hardly surprising as it had a favourable recommendation for acceptance from its executive committee.

This is the second public service union to accept the deal of 10% to 10.5% increases over 27 months, the Public Service Executive Union already having done so.

Public sector criticism of Towards 2016 arose because opponents claim that increases would depend on considerable modifications in their terms and conditions.

Possibly, in light of the first benchmarking agreement which cost the country over €1 billion paid to categories of the public sector, the public is entitled to vastly improved services.

In many instances the taxpayer could argue that value for money was not delivered and would not entertain public, or civil, servants being put on a par with highly paid people in the private sector as a simple matter of entitlement.