Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment stands ready to make good on its four per cent of­fer con­cern­ing pub­lic sec­tor ne­go­ti­a­tions as soon as it is ac­cept­ed - but if trade unions choose to send these ne­go­ti­a­tions to the In­dus­tri­al Court, Gov­ern­ment will ask that these mat­ters be ex­pe­dit­ed.

"... So that we can act swift­ly in ac­cor­dance with the Court’s de­ci­sion," Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said dur­ing yes­ter­day's 2023 Bud­get ad­dress.

Im­bert had said Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to raise the re­quired fund­ing for back­pay for its cur­rent of­fer quick­ly "and to make these pay­ments prompt­ly, as well as ap­pro­pri­ate ad­just­ments to the bud­getary ap­pro­pri­a­tion to cater for the re­cur­rent in­creas­es in salaries and wages."

He'd said cen­tral to the ef­fi­cient func­tion­ing of the pub­lic ser­vice is the es­tab­lish­ment of a fair and eq­ui­table com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem for pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees, "but the ap­proach to achiev­ing this ob­jec­tive must be care­ful and con­sis­tent with the known avail­abil­i­ty of re­sources."

"No re­spon­si­ble Gov­ern­ment can con­tem­plate bank­rupt­ing the en­tire coun­try, sim­ply to ap­pease a por­tion of the labour force. We're firm in our view that our cur­rent of­fer of 4.0 per cent over the pe­ri­od 2014-2019 for the main­stream pub­lic ser­vice - al­though it will be a chal­lenge to raise the re­quired funds - is prac­ti­cal and eq­ui­table. One trade union has al­ready ac­cept­ed our of­fer. We hope oth­ers will soon fol­low suit."

Im­bert stressed the ad­di­tion­al an­nu­al re­cur­rent cost of Gov­ern­ment's of­fer is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500 mil­lion, and if this is ex­tend­ed to the wider state sec­tor, the ad­di­tion­al cost will al­most dou­ble to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion per year.

"The back­pay that will ac­crue to June 2023 from our of­fer for just the main­stream pub­lic ser­vice is $2.4 bil­lion. This will in­crease to $4.6 bil­lion when the en­tire state sec­tor is in­clud­ed. As dif­fi­cult as these amounts will be to ac­com­mo­date, we'll find the mon­ey and make the re­quired pay­ments prompt­ly. But any more than this will wreck the econ­o­my, not on­ly for the same pub­lic ser­vants but for every­one else."

Im­bert said the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion's (PSA) coun­terof­fer of a 19 per cent in­crease in salaries for 2014/16 is un­sus­tain­able.

" If ac­cept­ed, this would cost $15.8 bil­lion in ar­rears up to June 2023. The ad­di­tion­al an­nu­al re­cur­rent cost would be $1.8 bil­lion. If PSA's of­fer was ex­tend­ed to the wider state sec­tor, $30.3 bil­lion in back­pay would be re­quired up to June 2023. The ad­di­tion­al an­nu­al re­cur­rent cost could be $3.4 bil­lion.

"And these cal­cu­la­tions don't cater for a sim­i­lar in­crease in the sec­ond three-year pe­ri­od 2017-2019, which if agreed to, could cre­ate a back­pay re­quire­ment of $50 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to the to­tal na­tion­al ex­pen­di­tur in pre­vi­ous years."

"Clear­ly, these aren't se­ri­ous coun­ter­pro­pos­als. They may sound good to en­cour­age march­es or threats, but I'm cer­tain the lead­ers know the facts, the re­al­i­ty and what is doable. It should be ob­vi­ous that de­mands of this na­ture can­not be met. Any­one who be­lieves the coun­try can af­ford this lev­el of pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture ($50 bil­lion) is sim­ply not be­ing re­al­is­tic."

He added, "Our of­fer of a four per cent in­crease over 2014-2019 is the best we can do, and even at this lev­el, we will have to dig deep to find the $4.6 bil­lion in back­pay that will flow from this."