Decision not to offer pay rise a 'slap in the face'

Civil service case study:Rosaleen Mooney, Clerical Officer, Department of Social Welfare

Rosaleen Mooney joined the Department of Social Welfare in 1971 at the age of 18.

She now works as a clerical officer in the department's offices in Drogheda, processing all kinds of claims from jobseekers' allowance to PPS numbers.

She started off working in the department in Dublin and took a break when her child was born in 1976. She then worked for 17 years in the office in Balbriggan before joining the Drogheda office in 2000.

She currently earns about €33,000 a year and is on the ninth grade of the 10-grade scale. She hopes to retire in four years' time at the age of 58.

In 2002 she and other clerical officers got an average pay increase of 8 per cent, but this year she will get nothing.

The report found that, when public service pensions were taken into account, Ms Mooney's pay was not below that of a private sector worker in a similar job.

The benchmarking body examined the pay scales of 35,000 people who are directly employed in departments and offices of the state.

These included clerical officers, of which Ms Mooney is one, executive officers and principals. It compared them to equivalent positions in the private sector and discounted 12 per cent for public service pension provision.

It concluded that only the principal officers' grade was slightly below private-sector rates.

Ms Mooney says the decision not to offer civil servants like her any raise through the benchmarking process amounts to a "slap in the face" given the demands on their services on a daily basis.

"At the moment it is so stressful with the volume of customers and the demands of customers. You have to know something about everything. You are there and you are telling people their entitlements and you have to be right.

"I have been in this department for that number of years, I've seen the changes, but nothing as bad as they are now. Even since Christmas, we've had big problems because of a lack of staff," she said.

Ms Mooney acknowledges there is job security in the Civil Service, but says sanctions, including sackings, are much more common.

She also says clerical officers get a long-service increment after 10 years and further increments after 12 and 14 years of service, but are dependent on benchmarking or promotion to get any real increase after that.