Donohoe’s hard line on pay demands seems unsustainable
It is in keeping with the annual whinge-fest from teachers and doctors — I mean conference season — that the issue of pay makes its way to the top of the agenda, writes .
Year in, year out, it is the same.
With the Oireachtas in recess, the conferences fill an otherwise barren news week. Hence their grievances tend to get a considerable amount of airtime.
One of the issues being featured is the lower pay for 60,000 newer entrants into the public service since 2011.
Richard Bruton, the education minister, had to face down the shouts and placards at the teacher conferences earlier this week from those seeking that the inequality be rectified.
The morality of having a two-tier pay scale has always been incongruous but it must be remembered that unions, yes some unions, agreed to it in 2011 and it wasn’t their top priority in last year’s talks.
The Department of Finance says it would cost up to €250m to end the disparity and already Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe is facing calls from within Government to use October’s Budget to make that happen.
Mr Donohoe is facing into a “perfect storm” of pay demands from teachers, doctors, and nurses which is threatening to derail a €3.2bn giveaway budget, which is likely to be the last before a general election.
Despite the express wish of some Government ministers for the pay of new entrant teachers to be restored, the Department of Finance is holding a hard line, saying “no side deals” will occur.
Such a refusal to bend heightens the chances of an autumn election with one minister saying he and his colleagues are already on “a war footing” and readying to face the people.
Mr Donohoe is facing increased opposition from unions and from some of his fellow ministers to his hard line on pay, but he is insistent there can be no revision of the national pay agreement signed last year.
“The unions had the chance to make new entrants’ pay a core demand last year, they didn’t,” said one senior Government figure.
“They had the choice to fix that issue, they didn’t. It is a bit rich for them to be squealing about it now.”
In addition to the teachers’ demands comes the ongoing protracted process of agreeing a new contract for GP doctors.
They say they were inflicted with cuts of up to 38% since the crash, while the Government says the cuts were actually 25%, and is demanding more work for any restoration.
The GP lobby, naturally enough, is resisting such talk and pointing to the lack of new doctors coming into the system and particularly the crisis in GP cover in rural Ireland.
Political pressure is mounting on Mr Donohoe to act.
Róisín Shortall, co-leader of Social Democrats, called on the Government to wake up to the crisis in General Practice and set out a timetable to reverse austerity cuts. The cuts, she said, are harming GP practices and patients.
If Mr Donohoe was finance minister in a normal Government with a majority, his tough stance might be the right strategy but, in a weak minority administration, it would appear to be unsustainable.
