Sir, – Your report that public service staff may receive an early EUR¤1,000 pay rise (January 17th). This partial restoration of the terms and conditions of the employment contracts of Government staff is described as an "increase" or a "rise" seven times in the article, but there is not a single reference to the fact that this proposal will leave public service workers on lower pay scales that in 2009.
These “increases” amount only to a partial restoration of the terms and conditions agreed in the employment contracts between Government and its staff whose pay provisions have been temporarily suspended because of the financial crisis and enabled through Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Fempi) legislation.
The Government itself recognises this reality and has both renewed Fempi annually and changed new employment contracts to allow downward revisions in salary scales in the future.
Public service workers are not pressing for unwarranted pay rises, rather a gradual restoration of the pay scales agreed in their contracts of employment. – Yours, etc,
DONAL McGRATH,
Greystones, Co Wicklow.