Conference Report 2016

CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE REPORT
on and four days off, with largely 10-hour shifts and
the Sunday 8 to 12 hour shifts. The roster consists
of core and non-core working times, to facilitate a
24 hour service, with some agreed variations to
meet the requirements of specialist units. The new
system proceeds from morning shifts to late shifts
to night shifts (rather than the other way round
under the old system). This system was designed to
be in line with the body’s circadian rhythms.
5.77 The revised system entailed major concessions by
this Association’s members largely designed to give
management greater scope of staff availability at
peak demand times (weekends and evenings).
Indeed, so significant was this rostering revolution
that in addressing the 36th Countess Markievicz
memorial lecture of the Irish Association of
Industrial Relations in 2012, the chair of the Croke
Park Implementation Body’s Reflections on the
Croke Park Deal presentation lauded this major
change as “the first such roster change in over 40
years”. Likewise, the Minister for Justice felt obliged
to extol the merits of the new rostering system as a
“perfect example of real reform”, whilst the Garda
Commissioner advised the Dail’s Public Accounts
Committee that:
“It is important to acknowledge that for the first time
in 40 years we have arrived at a policing programme
that will match demand with the availability of gardaí
at particular peak or pinch points within the
system…”
5.78 In the case of the prison service, it is also notable
that the management or Irish Prison Service’s
(2005) Proposal For Organisational Change
constituted a radical move away from the service’s
traditional reliance on overtime to a new ‘additional
hours’ system. Prison service staff committed to
working ‘additional’ hour bands.
5.79 Related to the initiative were a host of staff
productivity and flexibility concessions. In 2005 the
Civil Service Arbitration Board summarised the
additional hours system as serving to:
“institutionalise...the working of additional hours” on
a compulsory basis. For this Review it is also
chastening to recall that the many unattractive
features of the new annualised hours system led
researchers at the University of Limerick to
conclude that over two-thirds of prison service
employees were actually dissatisfied with it.
5.80 The GRA also notes that a most practical
consequence of the annualised hours arrangement
is that by 2008 the Director General of the Irish
Prison Service was able to point to an annual saving
of €30million in overtime costs with over one million
hours taken out of the prison working time system.
According to the assessment of the Civil Service
Arbitration Board (2005) of the new additional hours
system:
“…there would be savings to the Irish Prison
Service in the short term and the level of those
savings would increase over time.”
5.81 By 2008 the Secretary General at the Department
of Justice was able to inform the Public Accounts
Committee that alongside sizeable savings, the
average write-off under the new working
arrangement was 28% or 100 hours per prison
officer. By 2014 the write-off has been almost
obliterated, as all of the additional hours were being
worked, while sick leave levels reduced.
PART SIx: NEw STRuCTuRES AND
mEChANISmS
Industrial Relations history of An Garda Síochána
6.1 The terms of reference of this Review conducted
under the auspices of the LRC, commits to
addressing:
“...the appropriate structures and mechanism for the
future resolution of matters relating to pay,
industrial relations and attendant matters.”
6.2 There have been serious instances arising from the
pay disputes. The Macushla ‘Revolt’ of 1961 gave
rise to proper representation of ranks and the
formation of the GRA. Since then, we have had the
Conroy Commission and Ryan Report as
mechanisms to address these issues; and also the
pay dispute of 1998 remembered in the public
consciousness for the ‘blue flu’ aspect of industrial
relations.
6.3 Relationships between the participants to the
industrial relations process in An Garda Síochána
probably reached their lowest point in 1998, when a
large proportion of this Association’s membership
phoned in sick on the same day (‘blue flu’). This
action was once again over pay; particularly the
restructuring clause of the social partnership
agreement – the Programme for Competitiveness
and Work). Our membership felt that they had been
unfairly treated. The discontent towards this social
partnership deal coincided with the formation of the
breakaway Garda Federation, splitting this
Association and defragmenting industrial relations
that would have proved unmanageable for all.
40 Garda Representative Association