Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure has said any agreement to increase public sector pay needed to be fair to Public Servants and to taxpayers which would be “a difficult balance”.
Minister, Michael McGrath said the Government needed to be careful to avoid wages chasing inflation, warning that this would make the current economic climate worse.
His comments came as Ireland’s largest public sector trade union, Fórsa held its national conference with delegates and passed a number of motions that called for pay increases.
General Secretary of Fórsa, Kevin Callinan refused to reveal the pay increase the body would be seeking from the Government however, many of its members have called for increases of up to 10 per cent.
Mr McGrath (pictured) said there would be “meaningful discussions” over the coming weeks about the public sector pay agreement.
“We do have a current Public Service pay agreement, which runs to the end of this year,” Mr McGrath said.
“The trade union side have triggered the review of that agreement,” he said.
“I have acknowledged that the current level of inflation is having a real impact on private sector workers, public sector workers and people who are not in employment. It is having an impact on people’s living standards.
“There have been some very initial discussions at an exploratory stage and those discussions now will move on, whereby my officials will be sitting down with me to discuss the possibility of new pay arrangements into the future,” the Minister said.
However, Mr McGrath warned that simply increasing pay would not solve inflationary pressures.
Dublin, 21 May 2022
