Senior Department of Justice officials and Garda representative were yesterday engaged in urgent talks to resolve a potentially major breakdown in Garda pay negotiations after an overwhelming rejection of a Government pay offer.
Although the pay offer was substantially above that given to most of the rest of the unionised workforce under the national agreements, gardai working in city divisions rejected the offer because it was conditional on major changes to their work practices.
Some 71 per cent of 2,582 gardai in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway voted against the Government's pay offer.
Altogether, there are around 8,880 officers of Garda rank in the force but the city gardai were allowed a separate vote on the pay offer because the productivity clauses affected them only.
Many country gardai stood to benefit substantially from the pay increase and sources in the Garda Representative Association (GRA) report considerable annoyance among many rural Garda divisions over the rejection of the pay offer by their city colleagues.
Some 4,500 gardai working in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick were eligible to vote in the election as they would have had to make the main "productivity" concessions in return for the Government's pay award.
The award was dependent on the urban gardai accepting changes to their working rosters to allow greater flexibility in detailing staff.
The average city garda works a three shift system on a strict roster which allows them to know, sometime years in advance, when they will be working and when they will be "resting".
The proposed new system, known as "flexi-rostering", would mean their shift patterns could be changed by management seeking to deploy personnel more effectively in the cities.
Management has argued for years that the present rigid rostering system prevents it from deploying personnel when crime rates rise. There was a previous unsuccessful attempt to introduce flexi-rostering in 1993.
However, the city gardai and Dublin Metropolitan Area (DAM) gardai in particular, strongly disagreed with the proposal to tamper with the rostering system. It was the previous attempt to change the rosters to a more "flexible" system that led to the 1994 split in the GRA when the city gardai left in large numbers to join the unofficial Garda association, the Garda Federation.
The federation was dissolved two years after it was formed and its members returned to the GRA but Dublin sources yesterday said last week's vote by the city gardai showed that there is still strong opposition to proposals to change working practices.
Other Dublin gardai told The Irish Times the city gardai would lose out on overtime payments under the new system. The proposed pay increases would seem broadly attractive to gardai in rural areas but many city gardai would face a loss of earnings, it was said.
City gardai also point out that the cost of living in cities is substantially higher than in rural areas yet there is no consideration of this in the pay offer. Many Dublin gardai support what is termed a "DMA allowance" to cover the extra costs of accommodation incurred in the city.
The pay negotiations have been protracted and tortuous, lasting for almost two years before leading to an adjudication process which was completed in mid-August. During the pay negotiations gardai went on strike on two days, the first time this has happened in the history of the force. Senior figures now feel any attempt to change to working arrangements in cities could lead to further industrial action.