Three days of strikes planned by rank and file gardaí for the coming weeks have been suspended.
Members of the Garda representative Association (GRA) were scheduled to stage work stoppages on Friday November 11th, 18th and 25th but they have now been deferred pending a ballot of GRA members.
The members will be voting on a Labour Court recommendation which would provide pay improvements worth more than €40 million. The recommendation was issued on Thursday, just hours ahead of a planned strike by the GRA which has some 10,500 members.
A meeting of the GRA central executive to determine whether or not to recommend acceptance of the Labour Court proposal was continuing on Monday.
A spokeswoman for the GRA said the ballot would go out to the association’s members on November 14th with a closing date of November 28th.
Earlier, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the Government could not afford to extend the pay deal offered to gardaí to all public sector workers.
Speaking in Brussels, he said the Labour Court recommendations for members of An Garda Síochána were more generous than the Government or the unions had anticipated.
However, he said while the offer was within the parameters of the Lansdowne Road Agreement, the same measures could not be offered to other unions.
“It is simply not affordable if that was extended across the board,” he said.
Implications
The Cabinet will meet Tuesday to discuss the implications of the Labour Court recommendation.
Under the terms of the Labour Court recommendation rent allowance for recently-recruited gardaí would be re-instated and increased by €500 to €4,500 from the date the deal was accepted.
For other gardaí the rent allowance payment would be integrated into core pay, with knock-on implications for overtime and premium payments.
The Labour Court also recommended the introduction of a new €1,459 payment for gardaí to attend briefings prior to starting their shifts . It proposed that this would come into effect from January 1st.
Minister for Education Richard Bruton said Monday that this money would have to come from within the existing resources of the Department of Justice, a view understood to be shared by several cabinet colleagues.
Speaking in Dublin, Mr Bruton said: “To be very clear the extra money going to have to be found in the justice vote...That is the clear situation that we face as a country.”
Cut spending
A number of Ministers have indicated that they will resist any attempt to cut spending programmes agreed for next year in order to fund pay increases for gardaí - or others in the public service who will now seek similar rises - over and above those set out in the Lansdowne Road agreement.
Mr Noonan said his colleague Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe would take soundings from the wider public trade union movement this week.
He said it was the Government’s aim and ambition that the pay of public sector workers would be restored.
However he added: “It will have to be restored but over time. The Government and in particular the Exchequer needs time to make the reinstatement of historic rates affordable.
“But they are not affordable in one fell swoop. We don’t have over €1 billion to do it all in 2017.”
