Government officials and Garda Representative Association (GRA) negotiators are expected to resume talks this morning on a 9 per cent pay offer. GRA vice-president Mr Michael Kirby said last night he expected talks to continue to the end of the week before the deal could be put to a ballot.
"It's very premature to be making announcements," Mr Kirby said, refusing to comment on the detail of the negotiations. "We're making progress, but the talks are ongoing." The 9 per cent is believed to be made up of a 5.5 per cent basic increase, a 1.5 per cent payment for past productivity and 2 per cent for future productivity.
The gardai would also be entitled to a separate 4.75 per cent increase made up of two catch-up payments under Partnership 2000, having not yet signed up to the current national wage agreement. The GRA is committed to putting any offer to a ballot of its members, a procedure that could take more than a week. If the deal were to be turned down industrial action could follow immediately. The deal is also believed to include measures to pay gardai directly into their bank accounts on a fortnightly basis, rather than the current system of weekly pay cheques.
The GRA president, Mr John Healy, who returned from holiday yesterday, said he was aware of the details only from newspaper reports. "I spoke briefly to Michael (Kirby) yesterday," he told The Irish Times, and he expected to join negotiators today.
Asked if he felt the deal would be accepted by members, he said it would "depend on whether there are strings attached. "The detail of this week would imply that it's a long way short of what members require. If the offer was in the region of 15 per cent I could fairly confidently predict acceptance. But because you're down in single figures I just don't know."
The talks, chaired by former Department of Education secretary Mr Declan Brennan, resumed for a day-long session yesterday, described by Mr Kirby as "fairly intense".
The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) is due to return to talks tomorrow, although it appears unlikely the GRA talks will have concluded by tonight. This may push the AGSI talks into next week, leaving talks with Garda chiefs and superintendents further down the line.
Sources on both sides of the talks said there was optimism that a settlement could be reached. The details of how the 9 per cent would be applied across the 14 grades of rank and file gardai are believed to be a major part of ongoing discussions. The number of years for which the pay rise would be backdated was also believed to be central to the deal.
The AGSI was engaged in official talks until last week, when the details of the current offer were finalised. Any increase in rank and file pay will be watched closely by the association, who will then use it as a basis for its own negotiations, to maintain pay differentials between higher and lower garda ranks.
If the deal is accepted by the garda associations, a second-phase productivity pay round is expected to start in September. This will deal with a smaller pay increase for efficiency measures to be introduced under the Strategic Management Initiative (SMI), including changes to rosters, "civilianisation" and a general overhaul of force efficiency.
It is believed the Government will use the 12.9 per cent awarded to prison officers as a blueprint for the combined phase one and two increases to gardai. However, this pay deal did not apply to all prison officers, with younger officers getting less than half the increase of their long-service colleagues.
