Public Service Agreement

• No further pay cuts until at least 2014
• Efficiencies and productivity to be maximised by appropriate use of resources
• Significant cost-saving reform measures across all parts of the public service including by extensive reforms in work practices and conditions of employment
• Review of extent of savings generated to be held in early 2011 to determine if scope for any reimbursement of pay cuts (priority given to reimbursing workers with pay rates of €35,000 or less)
• Similar reviews to be carried out in following years
• Reduction in staff numbers across the public service by end-2012 to be implemented by employment control frameworks
• Current Government moratorium on recruitment and promotion to continue to apply until numbers employed in each sector have fallen to the levels set out in the employment control frameworks
• No compulsory redundancies but flexible re-deployment arrangements necessary
• Unified public service labour market to be created
• Promotion and incremental progression based on performance
• Industrial peace clause to be put in place- no cost-increasing claims can be made for improvements in pay or conditions for the duration of the agreement .Strikes or other forms of industrial action in respect of matters covered by the pay agreement will be banned
• Discussions to take place with the IMO in relation to the Government commitment to make appropriate changes to the Competition Act and the Transformation Agenda for GPs to be completed within 2 weeks

Download the Public Service Agreement 2010 - 2014 here.

The Health Sector implementation group is chaired by Mr Pat Harvey, a former health board CEO and includes an equal representation of both union and management representatives. The unions represented on this group are the IMO, INMO, SIPTU and IMPACT The first meeting of this group took place on 6 October and it has responsibility to implement savings under the agreement and to implement the Health Sector Plan. In summary the plan provides changes for employees in the health service by

1. redeployment of staff with particular focus on ensuring the retention of services which would otherwise be discontinued due to budgetary shortfall;
2. acute hospitals - move from seven days to five / day case work;
   1. review of rostering;
   2. escalation policies in the emergency department; and
   3. review of operating theatre rosters.
3. the introduction of staff to population ratios with regard to all health professionals e.g. nurse/midwives/physios etc with a view to standardising the staffing structure across the country;
4. radiology - extending the working day;
5. primary care;
6. Reassignment of staff.

A template has been agreed that will be used to record any savings made.

The working group is now working on the arrangements that will apply in cases where adjudication is required under the agreement.

Further to a meeting of the Health Implementation Body on 12th January 2010 revisions were made to the Health Sector Action Plan to reflect the discussions held and in light of the decisions taken by the Government in the context of the Estimates and Budget 2011 in order to ensure that the Plan supports the changes to follow from those decisions. The budgetary measures decided by Government to implement the National Recovery Plan, require underlying savings of €960m in the HSE budget for 2011 (which includes the cut in cash terms and the cost of unavoidable cost increases) allied with reductions in numbers required under the employment control framework. Notwithstanding these reductions the HSE has committed, in National Service Plan, approved by the Minister on 21 December 2011, to maintaining services at last year's level. In order to achieve this, the HSE needs to make significant savings in non-pay costs and in non core pay expenditure and crucially has to deliver the same quantum of services with less staff. The revised action plan has been prepared with this imperative in mind. Progress has been made in a number of areas of the Action Plan including the transfer of the Community Welfare Staff to the Department of Social Protection from 1 January 2011, changes in laboratory work practices, the completion of the Voluntary Early Retirement (VER) and Voluntary Redundancy Scheme (VRS) for management administration and support grades. It is proposed that there will be a number of new clinical programmes in 2011 on which the IMO will be working to ensure doctors interests are protected at all times.