A Christmas present for senior Civil Servants

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Howitzer

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Does anyone have an opinion on [broken link removed] that came out on Christmas Eve?

I've posted this a couple of times but have struggled to constrain my disgust.

On budget day, the Minister for Finance announced that civil servants earning between €165,000 and €200,000 would take pay cuts of 12% while those earning over €200,000 would take pay cuts of 15%. Yesterday (24th Dec), with the public focusing on their pre-Christmas preparations, the government announced that this would not be happening after all.

These pay cuts have been rolled back for two reasons. First, the government announced that it was going to take into account the elimination of “performance-related awards” which had averaged ten percent of their salary. As a result it reduced the new pay cuts for some civil service grades to reflect the loss of this ten percent .........

First, these performance-related awards were, as their name suggests, not guaranteed but (at least in theory) related to performance. This move appears to be an effective admission from the government that these payments were not in fact performance-related bonuses but part of the core pay of these civil servants. For a government that claims to be keen to introduce reform into the civil service (something that should include bonuses as incentives for good performance) this is a very unfortunate precedent.
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Karl Whelan and Richard Bruton pretty much nail it.
 
Do we have any idea how many public servants are on such "performance related bonuses"?

Have we any idea what metrics are used to evaluate the payments which I understand are anything up to 10% of the base salary?

Are such payments superannuationable?
 
What I am wondering about is that this was supposedly a payment for performance related pay. As shown earlier 13 out of 14 received it. So this new amendment to the cutback is now treating this as part of normal pay and therefore performance was never really part of the payment.

The lower grades should be frothing at the mouth at this slap in the face.
 
Excellent news.
Shows that this Government is for turning.
This surely must be grist to the union's mill , hopefully co-ordinated industrial action will now further influence Government thinking.
 
The "performance-related awards" system was set up for assistant secretaries and deputy secretaries in 2002. The 2007 bonus awards for this group cost about €2.7m -- an average of around €17,763 each.
To qualify, the senior civil servants had to set their own targets in "three key areas". They then had to assess their own performance in a report at the end of the year. This was sent on to the head of their government department and a group known as the [broken link removed]. In 2008, more than 91pc of these civil servants got bonuses ranging from 5pc to 15pc -- with the remainder getting less than 5pc.
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Deiseblue said:
Excellent news.
Shows that this Government is for turning.
This surely must be grist to the union's mill , hopefully co-ordinated industrial action will now further influence Government thinking.
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I don't think you really get who runs this country, and for whose benefit it's so run. You've been shafted.
 
Deiseblue said:
Excellent news.
Shows that this Government is for turning.
This surely must be grist to the union's mill , hopefully co-ordinated industrial action will now further influence Government thinking.
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Why exactly is this excellent news?

And once again, how then do you propose that the required savings are made?
 
Be interesting to hear the union view as their own salaries are directly tied to these grades so they've an even greater than usual vested interest. But I presume it'll be no paycuts for anyone in the public service no matter how overpaid.

It should be noted that the Hayes report which took several months to fudge a 100% overpayment to some grades down to a 10-15% paycut did not take bonuses into account when doing its comparisons, i.e. the original pay cut recommended had already taken into account that bonuses were not going to be paid.

I can only hope they have shot themselves in the foot by being spectacularly over greedy, the last thing the higher grades needs after the neatly controlled and edited Hayes report (basically published conclusions without showing the figures or basis for "adjusted income") is people looking closely at their salary levels.
 
boris said:
The lower grades should be frothing at the mouth at this slap in the face.
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We are :mad:. Those 'performance related' rewards that Asst Secs got always left a bad taste in people's mouths. They were usually based on a lot of hard work and initiative from those lower down the ranks. Thankfully they've now been scrapped.
 
Well (speaking as a Public Servant) no PS should be getting a bonus anyway. It just doesn't sit right considering what your job is about.

However your view point is not exactly correct. They have incorporated them into normal pay (on the face of it) and therefore eased the pain for themselves and basically let all the rest of the CS/PS suffer but not themselves.
 
Howitzer said:
I don't think you really get who runs this country, and for whose benefit it's so run. You've been shafted.
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I'm in no doubt as to who runs the country.
The most incompetent shower of wasters I've ever had the misfortune to have as the Government of my country !
As to whose benefit it's run for ? - could I propose a coterie of Bankers and developers ?
Your " you've been shafted " comment needs some explanation unless you're referring to what the majority of the country has experienced under this Government !
 
Deiseblue said:
I'm in no doubt as to who runs the country.
The most incompetent shower of wasters I've ever had the misfortune to have as the Government of my country !
As to whose benefit it's run for ? - could I propose a coterie of Bankers and developers ?
Your " you've been shafted " comment needs some explanation unless you're referring to what the majority of the country has experienced under this Government !
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I think you're deluding yourself DB. This isn't the thin edge of any wedge. This is about pensionable salaries. This is about those in senior CS positions pulling up the drawbridge.
 
Howitzer said:
I think you're deluding yourself DB. This isn't the thin edge of any wedge. This is about pensionable salaries. This is about those in senior CS positions pulling up the drawbridge.
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Have to disagree.
This rowback demonstrates clearly that this Government is for turning.
The knock on effect has seen the CPSU up in arms and will ultimately make it easier for all the unions to sell industrial action to their already furious members.
Still at a loss to understand your " you've been shafted " comment !
 
I agree. I think this is going to add fuel to the fire of angry civil servants down the ranks and has made industrial action much more likely now. I presume the logic that senior civil servants will use is that 10% of their salary was 'held back' every year until they proved they had reached certain targets but I don't think this will wash.
 
liaconn said:
I agree. I think this is going to add fuel to the fire of angry civil servants down the ranks and has made industrial action much more likely now. I presume the logic that senior civil servants will use is that 10% of their salary was 'held back' every year until they proved they had reached certain targets but I don't think this will wash.
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Liaconn I agree with you on this. However what has to be remembered here is that they have now incorporated what was a "variable" on their salary into their normal pay. Normal civil servants don't have this "soft" option that they used and I think that it is more likely than not that the CPSU will go down the road of industrial action regardless of what ICTU do.

It was a smart move but no matter what excuse they provide they have converted "unguaranteed" pay into "guaranteed" pay. Straw that broke the camels back comes to mind.
 
There was a thread a while back entitled public sector vs public sector - it could happen yet.
 
ajapale said:
Do we have any idea how many public servants are on such "performance related bonuses"?
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Now 600 escape full brunt of public sector pay cuts.

A special arrangement exempting 150 top civil servants from full pay cuts will also apply to a further 450 senior managers across a string of state bodies, the Irish Independent can reveal.
As ordinary gardai, HSE and local authority workers see their pay slashed, some of their bosses have been told they can keep more of their much larger salaries.
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Who'd a thunk it, that bonuses were so common in the public sector.
 
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