Conference Report 2016

CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE REPORT
Internal Relativity and the Garda Rank
5.19 The Sergeant rank is the next rank above that of
Garda in An Garda Síochána. There is a long
established pay relationship between the Garda and
the Garda Sergeant ranks. In their submission to the
Ryan Committee of Inquiry the Department of
Justice acknowledged that:
“...the Garda rank is the basic rank and, in the past,
the pay of this rank tended to be fixed first, the pay
of the other ranks then being fixed by reference to
this base.”
5.20 The Ryan Committee fixed the rank differential at
10.6% (for a Garda at 15 years’ service). In the
Committee’s view, this revision reflected
‘appropriate recompense for the higher skill and
responsibility required’. However, by the time the
Haddington Road Agreement came into effect the
relevant differentials had swollen to 16 and 18%
(including the Long Service Increments and on scale
maxima respectively).
5.21 The Public Sector Benchmarking Body enabled this
disconcerting drift in 2002 that notably revealed
little about its methodology and nothing of its
dataset or the logic associated with its
recommendations.
5.22 This Association’s concern with the differential drift
is further accentuated when compared with the
British scenario, where (following the ratification by
the Home Secretary of the recommendations from
the two Winsor reports) the differential stands at
12% at the top of the scales. This is a matter that
warrants the immediate remedial action in favour of
the Garda rank.
The Relative Pay Performance of Gardaí
5.23 Having paid a heavy price for the mistakes of others
and as the national economy emerges from the
clutches of the Troika the era of pay cuts,
deteriorating employment conditions and pension
levies should now be restored. Counter arguments
of the state of the national finances must now
acknowledge the turning economic tide and the
predicament of the Garda rank in our labour force. In
recognition of the unique status and role of police in
society the British government has on occasion
exempted the police force from its stringent public
pay policy.
5.24 Regardless of the the absence of direct pay
comparators with the Garda rank, official sources
contend that the pay of members of the Force
cannot be totally divorced from other employments.
The Garda rank’s pay compares poorly with many
other public service categories with relevant criteria
like promotion opportunities and pay scale minima,
maxima and scale length; garda pay is well below
the average pay available to a wide array of private
sector employee categories. Successive surveys
conducted by management consultancies also
indicate that this inequality is accentuated by the
various benefits packages enjoyed by many
employee categories.
5.25 The Garda rank has endured a series of reductions
in pay and employment conditions, this has been far
from the standard workplace experience. For
example, IBEC’s dataset reveals that while gardaí
were enduring a succession of cutbacks the
overwhelming majority of IBEC members opted to
leave basic pay levels intact throughout 2010 and
2011. This was also replicated in Central Statistics
Office (CSO) figures from 2009 and 2010.
5.26 This practice persisted in 2012 when a third of IBECmember
companies confirmed that they were ready
to increase basic pay. Progressing to 2013,
approximately 40% of member employers were
planning to increase basic pay, whilst their
subsequent survey (for 2014) found that the
majority of employers planned to increase the basic
pay of their employees.
5.27 The Price Waterhouse Cooper’ survey also found
that a majority (nearly two-thirds) of respondent
employers anticipated pay rises in 2013. The
Hudson Human Resource specialists’ survey in
2013 was able to conclude that:
“In spite of the current economic challenges,
employers are forecasting encouraging
developments over the coming 12 months. A
reassuring 59% of employers said they are planning
to increase salaries within 2013 with 57% also
saying they plan to award bonuses.”
5.28 A similar trend was reported for 2013 in the
Brightwater Recruitment specialists’ national salary
survey, which found that there had been an
‘increase in salaries across the board, averaging
between 2% and 4%’. This trend was also confirmed
by the State’s ‘think-tank’, the Economic and Social
Research Institute (ESRI), which in 2012 overturned
‘anecdotal evidence’ about widespread pay cuts in
the private sector during the recession. It found that
employers were reluctant to cut wages ‘in order to
avoid productivity losses associated with worker
dissatisfaction or higher rates of labour turnover’.
34 Garda Representative Association