merrion street

Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin today published the outcome of the review of public service allowances and premium pay following consideration by Government.

The Minister noted that:

Over 1100 allowances have been notified to his Department, and over 800 business cases (some covering multiple allowances) were submitted by Departments/Offices for retention of allowances, either in the current or modified format.

The Minister accepted that given the size of the review undertaken that the savings targets for 2012 would not be realised. This will not impact however, on the achievement of the pay bill budget for the year which will be fully realised.

The Minister announced that the following changes will be made to the public service allowance regime:

• a) Certain allowances will not be paid to new beneficiaries. The annual cost of paying these allowances to current incumbents is in the region of €475m.
• b) A further range of allowances with an annual value of €245m will be subject to modification to the payment terms.
• c) In addition allowances currently payable to officials who travel outside of Ireland and the UK to represent Ireland at meetings of the EU or other international organisations, or who act as Chairpersons of EU committees (collectively known as Chairpersons and Delegates allowance) are being abolished both for new beneficiaries and existing staff,

The aim is to reduce the total cost of the Exchequer pay bill by some €3.8 billon in the period from 2009 to 2015 - a 20% sustainable fall in the cost of employing people to deliver public services by 2015.

The required savings in overtime amounting to some €40m has already been effected by reduced allocations for 2012 and this means that overall expenditure on over time has been reduced by a total of €150m or 30% since 2010.