Major housing, road and sewage developments throughout the State are being stalled because of a shortage of local authority engineers. The shortage is particularly severe in the greater Dublin area and has been aggravated by a deadlock in negotiations on restructuring proposals for the engineering grades.
Because of the dispute no county engineers have been appointed in the Republic for two years and vacancies now exist in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Donegal, Tipperary North Riding, Longford and Westmeath. Failure to improve pay rates has also seen a steady drift of other engineering staff to the private sector, where pay rates are much higher.
All of the Dublin local authorities have shortages ranging from 20 to 25 per cent in engineering staff. Dublin Corporation and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Country Council are seeking recruits in Britain.
However, the worst affected local authority is Fingal, where only 10 of the 20 vacancies created by engineers leaving for the private sector have been filled. In the crucial senior executive engineering grade, only six out of 16 posts are occupied.
SIPTU local professional officers' representative Mr Tom Crean, who represents the majority of engineers, blamed management for the delays in concluding negotiations. "All staff interests were extremely surprised when the management side ended negotiations last February with no notice."
The chief executive of the Local Government Management Services Board, Mr Sean O Lanagain, disputes this version of events. He said that neither the local authorities nor the Department of the Environment had broken off talks.
There had been detailed discussions culminating in a plenary session between the two sides on February 17th, when management had put its final offer. He said that SIPTU and IMPACT had responded in early March but had yet to make a definitive response to the offer.
At the heart of the dispute is a proposal to abolish the post of county engineer, which has been a major promotional outlet for the profession. Instead, the Government proposes to replace them with directors of service, drawn from management and administrative grades.
The engineers argue that engineers spend 80 per cent of local authority budgets and technical knowledge is needed to ensure the right decisions are made.