Some of the State’s most senior politicians, including Minister for Public Expenditure Michael McGrath, logged in a fortnight ago to a video meeting of the LEEF, a body whose existence is known to few.
LEEF is the Labour, Employer Economic Forum, which along with the National Economic Dialogue, or the NED are faint echoes of the now defunct, but once powerful, system of social partnership.
LEEF provides a space for Ministers, unions and employers to discuss economic and labour issues and played a key role in devising the back-to-work protocols after the first lockdown.
On February 12th, union leaders sought to look beyond the pandemic and put down a marker that some form of recognition – a payment, or benefits – must be provided to key workers who had kept the country moving during the crisis.
The Government appears amenable, but knows that this could prove to be hugely divisive if this is confined to State workers when many others were key to society’s operations, while hundreds of thousands of private-sector employees found themselves out of their jobs.
However, Mr McGrath, who was on the call with Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, maintained that private-sector workers well as those employed by the State would have to benefit from any new "recognition".
‘Practical benefits’
There could, he told The Irish Times this week, be no public/private divide or valuing one group over another. He suggested the Government would engage with both private-sector employers and unions on “practical benefits” to be awarded and this was not something Ministers could come up with alone.
Careful thought will be needed to how workers would be acknowledged but that it would be more “than a round of applause”.
Earlier this month the Tánaiste suggested key workers could receive cash payments or additional leave. Individual health and transport unions have sought 10 days’ additional holidays.
Mr McGrath said a divisive approach could not be adopted.
“I absolutely recognise the extraordinary efforts of our public servants and there will come a time after the pandemic when we need to reflect on how we recognise the efforts of those public servants, but also those working in the front line in vital public services in the private sector. When you think about all the basic services that we all relied on to survive and to keep going throughout the worst of the pandemic: to be able to go to the supermarket and get our groceries, to have our bins collected – all of the vital services performed by both the public and private sector. “
The public/private-sector argument also raised its head in recent days after the ratification of the new €900 million pay deal for 350,000 State employees.
In an interview with The Irish Times Mr McGrath strongly defended the new accord. Without a deal, the Government could have faced “multiple” industrial relations issues over the coming years, he said.
“From my perspective, given that the public-service pay bill is around one third of our overall current expenditure, there is a real value in getting a level of certainty and stability around such a large envelope of expenditure.”
He said the Government would expect significant flexibilities on the part of public-service personnel to continue and that new action plans on reforms would be drawn up within weeks.
The carrying forward of terms and conditions agreed in past agreements were not without value, since it could not be taken for granted that deals on redeployment, co-operation with restructuring, or the use of new technology, etc, would not lapse if they were not set out in a new deal.
The Minister also said the Government had not undertaken to abolish fully the additional unpaid working hours introduced for public-service staff during the financial crisis nearly a decade ago – which have become a major issue for trade unions.
“We are not committing to a full reversal of the additional working hours but we are putting in place a process that will scope out exactly the consequences of what that would be and we are committing to making a start to that,” he said.
He said the Government had allocated €150 million next year as part of this process but going beyond that did not form part of the current agreement and would be a matter for future discussions.
The Department of Public Expenditure had previously estimated that abolishing these additional hours in full would cost more than €600 million, although this is disputed by unions.
Other public-service reforms such as standardised sick and holiday leave and the new, less generous pension scheme for those appointed after 2013 would not be changed.
Mr McGrath said there would be “a larger State” coming out of the pandemic but that the rate of growth in numbers employed in the public service over the last year “or anything like it” is not sustainable.
But, major investment in the health services is needed, and the aim is to increase staffing by 16,000 over the pre-pandemic levels.
“We are investing now in permanent increases in capacity across the system. These are permanent expenditure commitments, there is no resiling from that. We need to have greater capacity in the public system on a permanent basis.”
More special education services are needed, too, which are a priority for the Government, he said. Over the next year, the Government would decide on appropriate staffing numbers for key parts of the public service into the future.
Capital developments
Besides major increases in current expenditure, the Government also has ambitious plans for capital developments, he said, adding that a planned review of the existing national development plan is “not designed to frustrate or delay individual projects”.
“We are committed to the projects in the current national development plan. What we are looking at in general terms is additionality. We are adding a number of years to the [life of the] national development plan. It will be a larger national development plan over a longer time horizon and [this will] allow us to recast our capital investment priorities and prioritising investment in climate action, transport, renewable energy and areas of housing and health infrastructure and around regional development and digitalisation and continuation of the broadband plan.”
The Minister said he would shortly be bringing forward proposals to allow for the greater involvement of people with private-sector expertise in delivering major public capital projects.
One of the most controversial recent major capital developments has been the planned new national children’s hospital and he said his priority was to see the project finalised.
“We have work ongoing on the site and we have a contract that needs to be fulfilled and a hospital that needs to be built,” he said.
He said there were a number of vacancies on the board charged with the development of the hospital and he was anxious that the Department of Health moved to fill these quickly. He said he looked forward to seeing a complete update provided to the Government on the status of the project, with updated timelines and costings based on a planned new report from the development board.
