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THE GARDA REPRESENTATIVE Association (GRA) has rejected a set of proposals put forward by the government in an attempt to avert Friday’s strike action.
The proposals, which Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe had described as “substantial”, were presented to the negotiating team yesterday and discussed by the association’s central executive committee last night. They unanimously rejected them.
Measures included the assimilation of rent allowance into core pay, which would slightly increase allowances and overtime payments as they are paid as a percentage of the core wage. This would be done on a phased basis over two years.
Payment for ‘parading time’ – the 15 minutes before their shift starts – was also offered.
In return, members of the GRA would have had to accept the full terms of the Lansdowne Road Agreement – including working 30 free hours – and comply with a rake of productivity measures contained in the force’s recently published modernisation and renewal programme.
Members of the GRA’s committee were said to be disappointed by the offer, which followed days of intense negotiations. There were particular issues with locking gardaí into the additional 15 minutes a day parading time, as it would extend their working week to 61.5 hours.
It is understood the GRA is open to progressing to the Labour Court this week with the dispute, if suggested by the government side.
Speaking to RTÉ News, GRA President Ciaran O’Neill said the association was “always open to talks”.
However, members have been informed that, for now, Friday’s withdrawal of labour will be going ahead.
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So the government’s offer was extend your working week and do an extra 30 hours for free and we’ll marginally improve your pay? So surprised they rejected it.
By my calculations, between the extra 15 minutes paid per shift (I’m assuming that already do the 15 minutes before the shift) but deducting the 30 free hours, the Govts substantial proposal was to increase their pay by 22 hours over the year, or in percentage terms 0.69%.
Yeah, substantial.
It’s the same with teachers and nurses. No pay restoration without Croke Park hours and additional duties and productivity measures. Yet the government scratch their heads and wonder why their proposals are being thrown out? Garda stations, hospitals and schools are stretched to breaking point after 8 years of cuts to pay, conditions and staffing levels. During this time, the government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to try and introduce new initiatives which increased the workload further. People have had enough. There’s only so many times you can kick a dog before it bites you.
All of this unrest in the workplace all started when just before the election Howlin stood up on his soap box and promised to restore every body to pre crises levels in an effort to get the public sector vote.
@john g mcgrath: The Luas drivers led the way in the current phase of industrial action y and they’re private sector. Workers across all sectors are beginning to ask themselves “Where’s our recovery?”
And many are beginning to understand that nothing will be given to them willingly by the capitalist class and the establishment political class that serves them. They will have to fight for every inch of concession as the workers who depend on the goodwill of capital will be mercilessly exploited.
So they offered the Gardai a tenner a year. Who the hell is running the government negotiations. It’s like they’re provoking the Gardai with offers like that. It’s time they took this seriously.
Misleading headline as proposal was not voted on
Huge difference between a garda and luas driver. Guards would have ten times the workload.
“the definition of madness is voting the same parties every five years and expecting change”.The bank bailout is ruining our country 10 billion on interest every year ff fg labour are constantly kicking the can down the road its time for change enough is a enough.
the guards were warned about this they were told that the bank bailout would effect them too but they didn’t listen.so who is to blame.people have to stop voting for the people that were complicit in the bank bailout simple as if not nothing will change.
@Bobby Phelan: I didn’t realise that the Gardai had formally sanctioned the banks bail out??????
Cheers for the input Bobby. I’m sure that comprehensible and relevant before you typed it…
@john g mcgrath: ”Thats what you do at elections”.
@Stan Stynes: a country broke by the inactions of the gardai and the state mob …….. i made a report to them and they covered it up ………….680 euros for first timers new into the force …… it a lot of bread ………………………………….
Guards on more than luas drivers
Harry, “€680 for first timers into the force…” Harry, are you a moron or a troll? My guess is both.
Talk up the ‘recovery’ to try to win the election?
Jack up rents and house prices to enrich property owners and vulture funds?
Fine Gael policy is destroying them (and us!).
This ‘first time buyers allowance’ is a fraud and a scam, pathetic government clambering to line the pockets of their developer/builder mates again. Just pay the guards a decent wage ye shower of imbeciles. They destroyed the force and eroded public confidence by making them work at water meter protests and then again not recruiting or paying for infrastructure for years which killed the publics trust. It’s wrong.
@jason bourne: now now brown cow …………..i remember you …………..i am still here with my good name
Harry did you Google yourself? Your good name? Oh boy
Europe needs to loosen the noose of bankers debt…
Simple as , or the justified unrest will only worsen ..
FG needs to toughen it’s stance against Brussels and Berlin , and look after their own for once and not themselves..
FF, FG and Labour all enforced the loading of the banking debt on to our backs. All of the establishment political parties represent the interests of capital at the expense of the working class.
And the same applies to the E.U. We have no friends among the ruling elites at home or abroad.
Billy the harbinger of doom. I bet you have all the answers.
The doom is already here for the hundreds of thousands of families who have had their living standards decimated under government policy to pay for the debts of speculative finance capitalism.
When people understand the class divide between capital and labour and how gains to capital are always made at the expense of the working class then many of the answers become much clearer.
We need to manage our economy and society on the basis of meeting human need rather than for the enrichment of private capital.
Eeee
I fully support the Garda. The idea that a new entrant guard gets virtually the same in annual pay as a politicians un-vouched expenses allowance is abhorrent
Can someone explain the 61.5 hours working week?
Gards do 6 days on 4 off…. 10 hour shifts
They have a 10 day week?? What’s their working hours per week, averaged out over the year?
Well…164 days off per year, based on four days off in every ten, plus 30 days annual leave too. That means they work 201 days. Ten hours per day = 2,010 hours per year = approx 38.5 hours per week. So roughly the same as anybody else with a job.
@Jumperoo: What value do you think four days off has after working for six days in a row of ten hour fifteen minutes shifts, quite frankly if you are driving in traffic for an hour each way, then you can add another two hours to the shift, not to mention that most gardai have to attend court on days off, no matter what overtime they would be paid, they have no lives or just live in a stupor from exhaustion, these are not family friendly working hours, Paschal Donohoe has a cheek to present his proposals as substantial, he is clueless, fully support the gardai.
Thanks for that , from above I was wondering why the hell they had 60 odd hours a week . More misinformation by both sides . Typical in Ireland industrial relations .
Hey. I just worked out how many hours they do and how it compares to others. I said nothing about what’s involved in those hours or value of those days off or anything else. Pardon me for trying to present some facts instead of getting wrapped up in emotion and rhetoric.
Yes but if you look the State sets the Gardas working day as 7am-7pm so most Gardai work from 12 midnight to 7am on their first day off as most Gardai finish on nights and recommence after rest days on early shifts so the time off is completely distorted. Yes the vast majority of Gardai work 7 hours of their first day off and the Government still have to neck to call it a day off.
@ jumperoo. People’s weekly working hours are not determined or influenced by annual leave entitlement. They work as follows: 219 days less 10 sundays (only 5 a roster to save the state money). So 209. Of these 26 are sundays (which are 8 hour days, again to save the state money ) leaving 183 at 10 hours. Total hours in a year is 1830+208=2038. 2038÷ 52=39.1 hours a week. So now the government want to add 15 minutes a day, plus continue with 30 hours worked for free. That adds over an hour to the current working week. If they aren’t happy with what they are getting paid for a normal working week, how is adding to it without increasing salary going to be accepted? The 15 minutes daily will effectively be forced overtime
Again. I wasn’t passing any comment or judgement. Just trying to get an approximate figure for hours worked, like somebody asked. My rough calculations of 38.5 hours per week are not too off your more detailed ones of 39.1 hours average. I’m glad we more or less agree. Thank you.
O’Reilly …Its the government needs to be disciplined!!!
Work an extra this,do an extra that,it’s all bollo*.set a standard working week and pay a wage for this.no sector is working these extra few hours anyway,do teachers,guards nurses etc clock in and out.Who can possibly verify that these extra minutes are being worked anyway.it’s time to stop messing and tweaking,set out what the working week entails and set a decent wage for it.
@michel O’Brien I can assure you the extra hours are very closely monitored and there is a signing in and out process
Thanks for that assurance Oonaghpoonagh I’ll sleep easy knowing you are there watching out for us all.
Do you have to be a smartarse? A question was asked and answered correctly. Gardai sign on and off and log onto a CAD system as well. When they submit their hours they sign a declaration and can be prosecuted for false claims. In the meantime a supervisor is responsible for monitoring this. Sleep well now in your tool box…
I have never heard of a single garda prosecuted for a false claim on his hours, it’s lucky we have such an honest police force looking after us.
Internally disciplined and fined up to 4 weeks wages Thomas.
@Thomas Murphy: tool.
Bring on the strikes and stop negotiating with all striking public sector unions. A few weeks of it and the grass root member half of whom I believe have no faith in the union bosses and have no interest in being on strike will start kicking up because if lack of pay. Call their bluff on it now.
What’s your belief based on?
Well to be honest with you from talking to one teacher at a party the other night. He had a point though. He told me he teaching 15 years now has a big mortgage and a few children. He said while he sympathies with the lower paid teachers but he can’t afford to be out of work for too long. He said a lot of colleagues of a similar age in his school feels the same.
Good man Brian throw out the personal insults. Keep them coming. Any of these minutes I’m going to change my mind.
Well said
And in the meantime mick it will be like the purge in certain parts of the country
Let not exaggerate Nucky. The only purge there’ll be will be a purge on the Irish economy as thousands of striking workers head north for a bit of early Christmas shopping.
Striking Gardai should be disciplined…
Maybe they should do their existing job before looking for a rise. Crazy amount of illegal fireworks in plain view. Not a single arrest.
Could you elaborate further? In your plain view or a guards plain view?
To be fair to the guards if they bring charges against anyone for this the accused will get free legal aid and at most a scolding from the judge They would be wasting their time
If we had proper environmental policies and education in place these kids wouldn’t be able to stockpile dozens and dozens of tyres etc in the first place. I met a few of them on a go kart with about 2 dozen tyres on the back a while back. Held on by a few others. Going down the middle of the road in the dark with no lights. One way of garage getting rid of old tyres instead of going the legal route !
Hold on till I get a couple of dozen tyres and burn them down the back of my estate. Wonder will the Gardai be there then ? Probably. To send me to the funny farm ! They have no problem coming along and locking someone into a building when it suits them, as part of a corrupt mental “health” system. So that the person can be pumped full of drugs and GPs can continue to over prescribe “anti-depressants” which can be just as bad as any street drug !
@ aine. The council have the necessary machinery to remove this, the environment section of each county council prosecutes littering. But I’m sure you knew this having thoroughly researched your response
I doubt the council were working on a bank holiday!. Smart sarcastic answers don’t change reality.
As for the garage that supplied them with dozen of tyres that’s another story.
“Waste tyres are not in themselves a hazardous waste, but have the potential to cause environmental pollution if disposed of incorrectly.
The Waste Management (Tyres and Waste Tyres) Regulations 2007 are designed to promote the environmentally sound management of waste tyres. They provide a regulatory framework for comparing quantities of waste tyres arising with the quantities placed on the market and in tracking the movement of waste tyres from the time they are discarded until they are either reused or processed for recycling and/or recovery. The Regulations came into effect on 1st January 2008″
I do feel like I’m communicating with the mentally challenged on here, as in not very bright people.
BTW The councils are pretty useless too at doing anything and passing the buck. In fact this country is pretty useless in general when it comes to caring for the Environment. As I said yesterday was a bank holiday. But then no one seems to give a f. All I see are people making excuses and getting paid to do same.
No point having environmental policies in place if the law is not enforced by the powers that be. The Gardai and council should be working together on this, along with the relevant Department, but no one seems to care. Maybe time to move to a more normal country.
Fair balls to them
FF would need to pull the plug on this farce of a government.
Favorite line is “That’s nothing to do with us”. I rarely get a useful answer from them any more when I raise an important issue. There are days when I wonder what they do. When someone has an adverse reaction to an anti-depressant their great at wandering through the person’s hallway and putting the person away, when the person has not harmed anyone. So that the person can be pumped with toxic drugs for a number of years, to cover for doctors prescribing habits. But when it comes to actual criminals many of them seem to roam free.
Mental health stigma is alive and well in this country and that will be reflected here by lack of support.
In the field of mental health people need to be as informed as possible as someday, without much warning, we can find ourselves, a relative or a friend coming in contact with the current system.
Educate yourself and have a lawyer, as they are not going to give you one in most cases. They will make you “voluntary” but it will have no meaning as they’ve reinvented the word for their own purposes.
Book review I wrote for a UK clinical Psychologist Lucy Johnstone.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/cr/rRZTSBCCI1MGDN/ref=aw_cr_i_1
The other question I would have is how much training the Gardai get in mental health and I don’t mean the brain.washing that comes from the Psychiatric system. I mean good, honest training without the bull. In how to deal with a person in distress.
Psychiatry during the Nazi era: ethical lessons for the modern professional ~
” The experience of Psychiatry during the Nazi era provides an example of how science can be perverted by politics and therefore can become vulnerable to misuse and abuse. An exclusive focus on the monstrous aspects of Nazi medicine enables us to dismiss such events as aberrant and deviant, with a subsequent failure to internalize the inherent and very real dangers of the perversion of science and clinical management by outside political influences. Psychiatry cannot afford to turn a blind eye to such a past”
In a country obsessed with celebrity culture it doesn’t really want to hear the truth about what’s going on at ground level in the mental “health” system. It’s great at talk but not great at actually making the necessary changes to move our system out of the dark ages.
When the Irish system tried to destroy me, the honesty of these 2 Psychiatrists (from New York and London) helped save me & made me aware of the true nature of the powerful but toxic drugs that I was given long term that cause “a significant reduction in brain volume that affects both gray and white matter”. A study funded by the maker of the drugs themselves. E Lilly / Olanzapine.
People should be looking for informed consent about these drugs. And the risks. Not forgetting that many tragedies in this country involve this drug, including suicides. The lack of investment in proper mental health services in this country and true help is a mini Holocaust as people are dying.
Peter Breggin, MD – Psychiatry and the Holocaust ~ “It all began with the systematic murder of mental patients” . A book by a Psychiatrist predated Hitler ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQZdUmxG1Es
Joanna Moncrieff – The Myth of the Chemical Cure: The Politics of Psychiatric Drug Treatment ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV1S5zw096U
Recent tragedies involving the drug Olanzapine that I know off the top of my head. Including some serious tragedies ~
* Shane Skeffington ~ Canna.bis abuse, forced injections, seclusion + OLANZAPINE withdrawal factors. Stopping the drug can lead to Akathisia (a severe inner restlessness)
* Ian Harman in Cavan hospital who took the life of another patient was in OLANZAPINE drug withdrawal (expert on the case * Dr Bob Johnson)
* Bellante case, OLANZAPINE drug withdrawal a significant factor, not forgetting cannabis use mentioned in the papers and that he was on this drug for 10 years which causes brain damage and makes coming off it very difficult.
* a civil servant from Dublin who traveled from a private hospital in Dublin city centre to Howth head ~ Mirtazapine~Prozac~OLANZAPINE
* TM, a retired nurse from Sligo ~ Cocktail of Effexor~OLANZAPINE after operation ! Checked into a hotel in Sligo … Rest in Peace.
While it may be called fancy names by doctors and pharma marketing campaigns, it is basically a major tranquilizer which is powerful but also potentially dangerous & damaging.
And not that many Irish people seem to care, Danish Dr Peter Gøtzsche (co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration) estimates that the drug Olanzapine has killed about 200,000 people worldwide. Not forgetting that 20 people died in the trials for the drug. That’s up their with numbers the Nazis killed before they targeted the Jews ~
“Top” Psychiatrists in the background in some of this video by respect Dr Gøtzsche, who speaks about Zyprexa / Olanzapine at about 4 mins 30 secs ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIIQVll7DYY
{ For those that may be on this drug or know of someone on it ~ Do not stop or change prescribed mind altering, psychoactive substances without talking to prescriber, due to dangers of withdrawal. But then the prescriber is the one who should tell you that. Not that they always do ! }
As an example of people I come across, if a person has an alcoholism problem and ends up in a “top” private hospital, instead of helping that person with their drinking they slap a label on them, give them loads of drugs and let them off out into the world after keeping them long enough and milking their VHI long enough. Then the person may go on to try to take their own life due to the drug / alcohol interaction. And die young because they never got the help that they needed in the first place. Meanwhile the same hospital, who doesn’t really care about people’s recovery, continues to get a steady stream of other people. And the conveyor belt continues. The people are just “cash cows” after all (that provides a steady income or profit). A system based on greed, power and control. And supported by the State and its institutions eg the legal system, Gardai etc
How naive people can be. Sometimes they learn the hard way.
And where is the State now in helping this young girl, after all the damage they caused her ? No where to be seen ! Having a young 16 year old on 2 different major tranquilizers, Lithium and a Parkinson’s drug did not help her. It seriously harmed her. All legal and above board of course ~
Dan Hogan, 17 ~ “Hospital was torture and traumatizing and was physically, emotionally and mentally exhausting, like nothing I have experienced before. I felt alone and that no one close to me understood what I was going through,” he wrote in his diary.
As I say I was 38 when this cruel system got it’s claws on me. These young people had their whole lives ahead of them. Parents be warned.
O the plus side. Friday night there won’t be a squad car parked on the double yellow lines blocking a safe view of the junction at the end of the lane I live on while they buy their chips……. Every cloud has a silver lining
You won’t have car because it will be stolen and the chipper won’t be open either because it will have been robbed
i just hope when they do get the pay rise, they actually start caring and put some effort into their job. most gardai that i’ve needed to help from have a very unprofessional attitude
Maybe you were being a bit of a d*ck to them? Can’t say I’ve had that problem with any Gardaí I’ve dealt with here. Perhaps you should go around in the patrol car or on beat with them for a month to see exactly how much care and effort they put into their jobs? Perhaps then and only then you can be knowledgeable enough to make such a sweeping statement.
Great to see the GTA stand up to this farce of government.the rest are full of yes men in the top layer and need to be removed.SIPTU,INMO??
If the police strike then that is treason and all of those involved should be prosecuted as they are breaking the law. The army should take their lethal weapons from them as you cannot have a striking police force with access to arms. We will have to close down the state If they strike…airport, docks and even Dail Eireann to protect the citizens of this state. Everyone deserves equal pay but to strike is treason and punishable by a term in prison for all concerned and why we need to bring in the army to round up striking police and detain them in detention centres
Ah yeah. Arrest all the gardai. What then? Who’ll police the state? The army? Good luck with that. Train more gardai? It’s take months. So yeah. I can see how rounding them all up and placing them in detention centres would work. Also, they’re an unarmed police force. Even those with firearm cards will have the weapons have them locked in the armory in their stations, which have to be signed in and out at the beginning and end of every tour of duty. The Emergency Response Unit are working on Friday. They have guns. Stop talking rubbish. Some law student you are.
What’s your take in the teachers strike paul, do you support their strike for equal pay and restoration
Of course he does. Look at his Facebook page. Speaks volumes.
Paul Lane, reference exactly how it’s treason, no made up-what you think is law, but actually reference it.
Also army does not have legal powers of arrest outside armed forces. Nor do they have legal powers to seize firearms. And we don’t have detention centres.
Live in the real world mate, not some fantasy land.
Shinner Shinner not a winner
Surely someone who joins a police force because they want good pay has their head in the wrong place. I do agree they should be paid and treated fairly but its not a normal job where they make a company a certain amount so the company decides to pay them more or less. The fire brigade dont get paid but the job needs to be done just as much as the gardas job. Maybe if the gards were volunteers aswel there might be more gardai that care about the job and not the wages and whatever else they get. did i hear they get rent allowance???
The fire brigade don’t get paid? Well dfb are well paid and rightfully so, they do an incredible job. There is auxiliary fire servics around the country that are part time but they are paid. A garda can’t have a second job, they required on beat or patrols 24 hrs a day. Quite ridiculous comparison to make. Do u also think nurses, teachers and prison officers and doctors should be volunteers as well. Sure why stop their all jobs should be voluntary by your reckoning. I think it was tried before and it failed. It was called communism
I’m sure the love of anyone’s job pays their mortgages. Gardaí are required 24/7. Fire brigade are too in the cities. Certainly in Dublin they’re paid as it’s a full time job. But down the country it has volunteers as they’re not required full time… But those volunteers still have jobs to pay their way. Gardaí is a full time 24/7 occupation. It couldn’t be done with a group of 12000 volunteers. Continuity of evidence, court cases, investigations… All the tip of the iceberg. You’re either a garda or your not. Gardaí pre ’08 get rent allowance and it’s very badly needed. There’s gardai sleeping in their cars and stations because they love two hours each way from where their stationed and can’t get a transfer. The newer recruits do not. Which is what part of the pay restoration is over.
*Pay restoration row*
Our weak goverment must .must order the gardai to work on Friday. Any no shows should be arrested by senior staff and charged under offences against the state act. As ESB strikers have been in the past .
Interesting. Can you quote the exact section from the Offences Against the State Act that applies and the power of arrest?
Was this one of the senior investigators in the Philip Cairns case ?
A former Garda accused of 77 counts of indecent assault will likely never face trial because he suffers from Alzheimer’s, a court has heard.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard Michael Nolan (74) suffers from short-term memory problems which could affect his ability to instruct his legal team or follow the evidence in a trial.
At a fitness to plead hearing, forensic psychiatrist Professor Henry Kennedy said Mr Nolan understood the trial process and the difference between a guilty and not guilty plea.
Prof Kennedy also agreed with another expert witness that Mr Nolan was exaggerating symptoms of the illness and was “malingering”.
http://thestar.ie/about-us/sex-charges-ex-cop-unfit-to-stand-trial/
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