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Brendan Howlin hopes unions will adopt the Haddington Road agreement, to cut public pay by €1 billion by 2015. Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland

Here's what's contained in the new 'Haddington Road' public pay deal

‘Croke Park’ is dead, long live ‘Haddington Road’.

THE FULL TEXT of the revised public sector pay deal has been published this afternoon.

The ‘Haddington Road Agreement’ – the proposed successor to the Croke Park Deal – includes a series of appendices to govern pay for individual sectors, including prison workers, teachers, health workers, Gardaí and the Defence Forces.

The terms of the agreement are to reduce the public pay bill by €1 billion by 2015, though it does not include any specific guarantee that the pay bill for 2013 will be reduced by €300 million as the government had wished.

The full agreement can be read here, but here’s a quick guide to what’s in the proposals:

  • As well as the adjustment of pay for Ireland’s 292,000 public workers, the proposals seek further flexibility from workers on redeployment, performance management, work-sharing arrangements and workforce restructuring;
  • The original proposals to extend the working week to a minimum of 37 hours (and to 39 hours, for those who already work over 35) remain in place, though individual sectors have been granted concessions as to when the extended hours will be introduced;
  • Increment freezes will also remain, though at a slightly lesser scale than in the original ‘Croke Park 2′ deal: those under €35,000 will have a three-month freeze, those over €35,000 and under €65,000 will have two three-month freezes, and those above €65,000 will have two six-month freezes;
  • Twilight payments are being scrapped;
  • Sunday premia will be retained, though management will now try to reduce the overall number of staff rostered on Sundays; hospital workers will be asked to make an extra effort to concentrate care provision from Monday to Saturday;
  • Overtime will be paid at time-and-a-half for workers under €35,000 and time-and-a-quarter for those over €35,000; those already working over 39 hours a week will be asked to work one hour a week, unpaid, until the end of next March;
  • Pay cuts for workers above €65,000 will remain as proposed in the original deal – sliding from 5.5 per cent to 10 per cent for those over €185,000. These will be temporary, however, with half of the cuts reversed in March 2017 and the remainder in January 2018.
  • The pensions for former public workers will be cut in line with those of current workers – so those earning over €32,500 will face a reduction.
  • Staff in the defence forces will lose some allowances, such as the Border Duty Allowance.
  • Gardaí will work three extra days a year for the next three years – split into one day of overtime, one extra 10-hour day, and ten extra hours at other times of the year. Voluntary overtime will go from 1.5x the usual rate to 1.25x that rate. Garda organisation, deployment and overall pay will be reviewed.
  • In the civil and public service, flexitime arrangements will be ‘red circled’ – existing staff with flexitime arrangements will be allowed to keep them, but they won’t be available to new staff above Assistant Principal Officer grade;
  • Teachers will lose their supervision allowance – worth €1,592 a year – but will have the equivalent amount added to their pay by 2018, with €796 added their pay in 2016-17, and a further €796 every year from 2017-18 onwards. Salaries for newly-qualified teachers who joined the profession in the last two years will also be nudged upwards;
  • In the health sector, newly-appointed consultants will not be faced with the pay cuts that are being applied to other workers over €65,000, in recognition of the particular cuts they have already faced in proportion to their peers. The working time directive, limiting the working week of junior doctors to a maximum of 48 hours, will be implemented by the end of 2014. Some tasks usually performed by junior doctors may be transferred to nurses.

Read: INTO says teachers should vote Yes to revised pay deal

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Gavan Reilly
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