The paycuts that never happened

Ken Foxe has blogged some interesting correspondence concerning the proposed paycuts for senior civil servants. He has also published the original documents. Ken writes:

THE Department of Finance climbed down on major pay cuts for 650 senior civil servants and other highly-paid public workers, primarily because they feared a costly legal action.

Legal advice had been sought by the Association of Assistant Secretaries and Higher Grades, which found that performance-related
awards were in fact part of a “core remuneration package”.

The Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan eventually decided to scale back the pay cuts for senior civil servants to take into account these bonus payments, which had already been stripped from their salaries.

A series of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act detail the to-ing and fro-ing that went on between the Department and the civil servants, as early as last May.

A letter sent by Bryan Andrews of the Association of Assistant Secretaries and Higher Grades said: “Our membership is also strongly
of the view that for the purpose of any exercise being contemplated as part of a reform of public service pay, Performance Related Awards must be seen as part of our core remuneration package.

“Such a position is strongly borne out by the legal advice now available to the Association. As you will appreciate from the foregoing, the Association has considerable concerns about this review exercise.”

“Legal concerns” seem to be quite common these days. Rody Molloy told us much about it.