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Updated 6pm
MINISTER FOR PUBLIC EXPENDITURE and Reform Paschal Donohoe has said the new pay deal reached with public sector unions is “fair to workers and taxpayers”.
The deal reached between government and the union on the new draft pay agreement will see pay restoration for the vast majority of public sector workers.
It is believed that more than 300,000 government employees will benefit from pay restoration and changes to pension contribution arrangements in the draft deal agreed late last night. Over three years, the deal will cost the government €887 million.
While the government has said there will be “no weakening of outsourcing protections”, unions were unable to agree a change in working hours or prevent two-tier pay scales persisting in the sector.
Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe welcomed the agreement and said that the provisions put the public sector on a “more sustainable footing and secures industrial peace so that our public service remains a rewarding place for those who work in it”.
TheJournal Politics / Twitter€887m extension to Lansdowne Road agreement is fair to taxpayers and public service workers says @Paschald pic.twitter.com/oeGcW2OmaP
— TheJournal Politics (@TJ_Politics) June 8, 2017
“We had to come up with an agreement that would be fair to everybody. It would be fair to those who work in the public services, but also those that depend on our public services,” said the minister.
Workers will now be balloted on whether or not they agree with the proposals, which would act as a successor to the Lansdowne Road agreement.
What does it mean for public service workers?
By 2020, more than 90% of workers will have gained pay restoration, according to trade union Impact.
They said: “By 2020, more than 90% of public servants will be out of Fempi (financial emergency measures in the public interest) pay provisions, and almost a quarter will have exited Fempi pension levy payments.”
All workers earning up to €70,000 will have this restoration by 2020.
By 2020, workers will have increases ranging between 6.2% and 7.4% through a combination of pay and pension levy adjustments.
For those earning €30,000 or less, pay and pension adjustments are worth 7.4% over the lifetime of the three-year deal.
Those earning between €50,000 and €55,000 will have increases worth 7%, while workers earning between €55,000 and €80,000 will earn between 6.6% and 6.9% more by 2020.
These increases will be made on an incremental basis, with the first increase of 1% set to take effect from 1 January 2018.
Kevin Callinan / TwitterPay proposals finally, finally being considered by the members of the @irishcongress negotiating team led by @IMPACTTU GS Shay Cody pic.twitter.com/Xv8A513Bts
— Kevin Callinan (@kcallinan50) June 8, 2017
The two-tier pay structure remains in the public sector, while there is little change in pension arrangements. The increases to pensions are the lowest for those who entered the public sector after 2013.
New pension contribution
The existing pension related deduction (PRD) will be converted into a permanent contribution while providing what the government called “modest increases in the threshold”.
Minister Donohoe said this contribution will ensure make public pensions “sustainable into the future”.
While there is no change to the pay scales for post-2010 entrants to the sector, there is a “process” in place to look at this again. There is also a process to review rostering arrangements, including Saturday working, but no change can be made without agreement.
While workers will be able to opt out of extra hours which were introduced over previous public pay deals, they will also receive a pay cut for doing so.
Opt-out of hours
The opt-out option will only be available upon the approval of management and will not impact on frontline services.
“If there are public servants out there in relation to the Haddington Road hours, who are facing particular challenges from a work-life balance point of view… we will offer them the opportunity not to work those hours, but it is only fair that if they are not working those hours they don’t get paid for them. I think that would be understood by employers all over the country,” the minister told reporters today.
Donohoe said he had to strike a balance, particularly with the hours agreed under the Croke Park Agreement, which he said have made a massive difference to the delivery of frontline services, particularly in schools.
“If I were to lose those hours the Exchequer would need to double the number of people it is looking to hire this year to maintain the same level of public services, let alone maintain it,” he said.
Eoin Ronayne, from the Civil and Public Services Union which represents more lower paid workers, told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that there’s “a lot to take in”.
“It’s been a very difficult couple of weeks,” he said. “There’s a lot of disappointments and a lot of gains. We didn’t make the progress we’d like to make on the hours, for example.”
Joanne Irwin, president of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, said that from their point of view, these talks were not satisfactory.
She told Morning Ireland: “My initial reaction on it is that it would have addressed new-entry pay and it doesn’t. [Union members] won’t be too pleased.
Our new entrants have waited long enough.
A representative of another trade union Siptu said on Today with Sean O’Rourke that their key objective to protect jobs from being outsourced has been satisfied by the new draft pay agreement.
But he said that they went into the agreement with a long list of demands, so not all of them have been achieved.
With reporting by Christina Finn
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call it what it is a tenement housing project
@Paul Quirke: it’s basically living in a hotel. Just phrased a different way
@rosetheone: where do you get hotel from?
@Paul Quirke: more like living in a youth hostel.
@Paul Quirke: race to the bottom..
@Paul Quirke: have you visited the tenement museum? My grandmother grew up in an old Georgian house in one room with 3 other families living in it with her family of 6 children. No indoor toilet. No need to exaggerate what they are.
@Paul Quirke: No, it’s completely different and ideal for young people who want to live alone with all the benefits of family, always someone to talk to, to share a meal with, to go to the movies with. Big cities can be lonely places. It works in London, so why not here?
@Paul Quirke: D4 tenement housing, living in a shoe box with a nice postal address.
If this was being built in tallagh, coolock etc it would be called a slum
@Monica Anderson: Unrelated strangers to share their virus with more like
@Monica Anderson: I do agree with a lot of what your saying, but I thought no they would be lovely for older people who no longer have family for whatever reason. And it would be better if they were for sale and not rent
Granted planning for apartments.. decided they couldn’t make enough money from them .. put the site with planning up for sale … couldn’t sell it for enough …changed the design to fit their profit margins. .. Co- living my ballbag.. should be called Maximum Profit rooms
@john deere: is that not the primary reason of any business, maximum profit?
@john deere: or they sense the arse is going to fall out of the country
Co-living = bedsits only worse. Just a money-grab
@Greg Ward: I don’t think you saw the bedsits from the 80s. Shared bathrooms and showers in hall ways
@Craic_a_tower: I lived in one. It was fine. Just depends on whether you have reasonably civilised housemates and not excessive crowding.
How low can you go again. It’s not like they will be cheap to rent or anything – but this is the prospect that successive Irish governments have led many of our coming generations to. (unless of course you never work, in which case you can expect a good standard new house, furnished by the taxpayer + have school meals delivered to it even when school’s are closed. What a country!
@Thomas Sheridan: you were doing very well until you started making crass generalizations about the unemployed.
@Thomas Sheridan: “unless of course you never work, in which case you can expect a good standard new house, furnished by the taxpayer + have school meals delivered to it even when school’s are closed. What a country!”–all brought to you, compliments of FFG. The amount of those that complain about the (so called, high) standards of living enjoyed by those on welfare conveniently forgetting the fact that it was FFG that introduced the policies they complain about. Those complaining then go out and vote FFG at each election and the cycle of complaining repeats. Hypocrisy at its finest.
It’s basically a giant hostel without dorms.
Lockdowns will be fun in co living accommodation
Back to bedsits only a fancy new name
@Pj Browne: Except there is nothing wrong with bedsits, I’ve lived in them for years when young and single.
@D’oh: Sure there’s nothing wrong with outdoor toilets, didn’t they do the job? What was acceptable once isn’t necessarily acceptable now, it’s called progress.
@D’oh: Except they were all kips
@Shane McGettrick: and let’s not forget beds it’s were outlawed, and now they are introducing these . As I said earlier they would be better for sale and not rent as people would eventually have somewhere to sell the f they wanted to buy a house
How’s social distancing going to work there!!!
How is the transmission lower in Co-living, sharing a living space with 110 other bedsits would spread any virus or pathogen like wild fire. Also who are they putting in these spaces, you could be sharing with complete nutjobs, the physical and psychological abuse would be endless…
The biggest issue I have with this is the price of rent. 1300 euro is way too much for something like this. Half the proposed price would be more reasonable.
@Seán Ó hAnnracháin: € 7,503,600 per year rental income based on figures given. Bottom line every time.
@Seán Ó hAnnracháin: more like 1/4 of that would be acceptable. Imagine paying €650 per month to share a kitchen with 12 randomers.
With Facebook opening up around the corner – they must be rubbing their hands. Thinking of the infection rate within these tenements is terrifying.
#BoycottBartra
This Flannery fella must be money hungry sleveen.
The problem is foreign workers will jump at this and drag us back to an era we fought to abolish .
@ChadChaderson: Those dang forners!!!
@ChadChaderson: oh foreigners! pushing up take home pay, and willing to work in modern community living. Not needing a private space to ignore your neighbours in. They’ll be not taking our women next.
Let’s see what what that FF mouthpiece Darragh O Brien has to say about this? Now is your time to step in and say no.
They want to turn an apartment block into a glorified student accommodation block. In the middle of a pandemic when people are trying to keep their distance the very idea of cramming 111 people into a shared living space is preposterous and reeks of nothing more than greed on the part of the developer.
Disgraceful profiteering! Who in their right mind could suggest co-living is safer in any respect than having your own accommodation. The list of problems with co-living are endless . This madness has got to be stopped.
There is a market for these….look at other big cities. They are intended for renting only, not family homes. They will suit single people with good jobs who want to rent for a while until they move on to somewhere else. They could help in a big way to ease the pressure on other kinds of rental accommodation. And hopefully covid will be long gone before they’re built so social distancing shouldn’t be an issue. If I was young in a good job I’d much prefer it to sharing a semi-d with strangers.
@Molly1952: You’d be sharing with strangers anyway – fewer bills in a house share split.
@Molly1952: that’s too logical for the comments section.
You left out ‘FFG’ and ‘greedy landlords.’
You’ll never get a job as a sinn fein troll. Sorry, ‘community worker.’
@Fiona Fitzgerald: I know Fiona… but there is something claustraphobic about sharing a semi-d with random people unless you are very easy-going. Maybe I’m a bit odd… I just think I’d like the anonimity of being a part of a wider group, but with my own private sleeping/living area. You’re right about the bills though.
My late mother was brought up in a tenement in Peterson lane .her opinion was it should never become the norm again. 1300 a month . Yet another shameless greedy developer
@Mick Scanlan: It’s an unbelievably high figure for monthly rent, sheer price-gouging. Selling a few units wasn’t enough for them, but those rents are far too high.
Coming soon to an Auctioner near you Tenements with Wi-Fi .. we have come full circle it seems .
There will be a market for co-living, but you know full well that they won’t be priced fairly. I remember those asking prices of €1300 and were taking many litres of #%&#, and should be more than half that, maybe €500 tops.
Don’t worry, these developers are just chancing their arm, the same used car dealers as Marlett and their ilk. By the time their Senior council and Business leader neighbours are finished with them , their ‘shared living’ project will be a distant memory.
How long before the Irish people have had enough? Am I alone in feeling a sense of outrage about this blatant swindle? This is an unashamed cash-grab by this developer of which it will not be the last. What alarms me most is how fatalistic and apathetic we have become. We face the prospect of an entire generation who haven’t been lucky enough to have been born into generational wealth becoming locked out of the housing market entirely. Our most respected workers (Gardai, nurses, teachers etc etc) having no living options available to them. It is the scandal of our time and we continue to shrug at this pilfering with tacit acceptance.
As our history demonstrates, there will be a tipping point.
While Im not a fan of this type of accommodation there is a need for it. Bedsits served a purpose back in the day. Students, young workers and those on lower salaries have to live somewhere. Not everyone can afford a house or apartment. At least it give people options. Really depends on how affordable they are.
@Christopher Byrne: Fair point, but these proposed rents are hugely inflated. They aren’t low enough to allow people to save to move on.
Are these developments the same thing as bedsits, which are illegal in Ireland?
Are there not enough unliveable shoe boxes in our capital already?
We should first acknowledge that Bartra is a vast commercial company with seven divisions. From healthcare, homes, social housing, commercial buildings and communal living. who knows maybe your pension fund is already investing in this development.
They are not some TD’s brother in law who got land rezoned or a Wam Bam Bam foreign construction brown envelope blackhole labelled as ‘construction inflation’.
Co living has its advantages over bedsit living. Better for young peoples to develop with others than stare at four walls in a bedsit. Its not a solution for our self inflicted housing crisis but it may suite professionals saving for their own home. why spend years paying off someone else’s mortgage renting without any frills.
These Co-Living, money making scams, need to be stopped.
Don’t worry, these developers are just chancing their arm, the same used car dealers as Marlett and their ilk. By the time their Senior council and Business leader neighbours are finished with them , their ‘shared living’ project will be a distant memory.
I couldn’t imagine Co-living with anybody. There’d be murder if someone left the kitchen messy lol
Aside from the fact that co-living sounds like a zero quality tenement existence, it seems absolutely LUDICROUS to propose building high density accommodation with shared common amenities *during a pandemic*.
Bartra just exploiting the property incentives in this country which are biased towards pension fund investors. In my opinion, for any of these housing developments to get preferential planning treatment, they should emphasise security of tenure and value for money. If not then, they need to abide by the local character of the area, i.e. back to the original lower density application.
Greedy f c. E r
Absolutely sickening. The grubbing for money and the disregard for real human needs here is beyond stunning.
Complex name competition anyone ?
Pad-daii Corona Vil-lieur’s
Winner gets first apartment nearest the kitchen.
i don’t see anything wrong with that sort of living arrangement if that’s what people want. But not for 100 people! The idea behind these living spaces is that people wont feel isolated and they have the opportunity to get to know other people but homing 100 people kind of misses the point! nobody can get to know 99 other people and get on okay with them. People will end up in their own bedrooms , isolated in even smaller spaces,just to get away from people. And can you imagine the trouble with ‘ who the hell didn’t clean up after themselves. who ate my bread, the smell of that fish, who is gonna take out the bins etc etc. fun times ahead.
have your say