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Gardai braced for budget ‘hit’
25 October 2009 By John Burke, Public Affairs Correspondent
The cost of policing Ireland has never been higher. The Garda Síochána pay bi l l has more than doubled since the start of this decade, while the number of fully-attested members of the force will be just under 15,000 - an all-time high - by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the two Garda representative groups which represent a majority of the force - the Garda Representative Association (GRA), and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) - have aligned themselves with nursing and prison officer unions in a bid to stave off an expected assault by the Department of Finance on the allowances and unsocial hours payments which account for a large proportion of their take home pay.
There are now 2,500 more police on the beat, monitoring organised criminals on wiretaps, or sitting behind desks, compared to three years ago.
This has obvious implications for Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy and John Leamy, the force’s chief civilian bean-counter, who have the task of budgeting for a force which continues to grow.
A critical assessment of Garda spending by the Department of Finance suggests that it will be difficult to implement short-term spending controls.
This is because, when pay cuts were announced last year, there was still a large number of garda recruits in training. The department has concluded that the moratoriumon recruitment introduced last year will have no real impact until the end of 2010, as trainees continue to join the payroll at a rate in excess of retirements.
Salaries, wages and allowances rose from€1.078 billion last year to €1.09 billion this year, out of a total allocation of €1.48 billion this year.
The €963 million pay element of last year’s allocation was actually under-spent by €22.3million due to difficulties in calculating unsociable hours payments and other entitlements.
In the past, any such savings would have been effectively redirected back into the force, but the message now is that where savings occur, there will have to be an exceptional justification for permitting that money to be redirected to plug overspends elsewhere.
Amid government moves towards public sector pay cuts, rank-and-file gardaí are concerned over possible cuts to unsocial hour payments. Michael O’Boyce, GRA president, said 22 per cent of an average garda’s pay was derived from these payments.
The Department of Finance has tabled plans to carry out a value-for-money audit of all Garda allowances, which range from rent allowance to an allowance for ministerial car drivers, working in a Gaeltacht area, working as a scene of crime examiner, and several dozen more.
In recent times, it has proved increasingly difficult to estimate the amounts which will be spent on several aspects of costs. Travel and subsistence, which is interlinked with the cost of gardaí attending court, general travel and also special operations, such as providing security for the Shell pipe-laying project in Co Mayo, which overran by €12 million last year, costing €38.9 million.
A total of €23.6 million has been earmarked for this subhead of spending for this year.
But this element of the force’s costs highlights the difficulties the Garda Commissioner faces in making his budget add up.
According to the Department of Finance, the amount spent on travel and subsistence is ‘‘directly related to the number of gardaí in the force’’. So, while this year’s allocation represents a 25 per cent reduction, it is difficult to see it being easily achieved by the end of the year.
As the department states: ". . . the fact will remain that the higher number of gardaí, the more pressure’’ will come to bear on this element of spending.
However, the biggest area of doubt over provisions for spending in this year’s Garda budget and into the future is pensions. Garda management and the Departments of Finance and Justice all agree that it will be extremely difficult to identify what the full-year cost under the superannuation allocation for this year.
In December 2006, the upper age for retirement was changed from 57 to 60 years for gardaí, sergeants and inspectors, as part of a trade-off between minister for justice Michael McDowell and Garda representatives for support of the reserve force. This led to some savings due to a slowdown in retirements over the past two years.
However, the Department of Finance believes this is now likely to reverse, as those who would have left the force over the past two years now reach retirement age.
The department has calculated that there are potentially 1,956 members who may retire in this category by the end of this year, meaning that the allocation for pension payments included in the Garda budget may have to swell considerably if other exceptional factors come into play.
There is strong anecdotal evidence that a higher-than-expected number of gardaí may apply to retire. Already, the pension allocation is at €286 million, compared to €250million last year.
But there is growing concern that this will be insufficient, given the need to allow for a recent change to the manner in which the allowances element of Garda pensions is calculated. This alone will add a further €5 million to the bill, as it is back-dated to April 2004.
On top of this, gardaí are watching to see what emerges in December’s budget. In the coming weeks, a large number are expected to submit their resignations to the commissioner.
Those resignations may be revoked within a limited window of several weeks.
Current pension provisions are calculated to allow for 406 retirements this year, but officially, more than 1,500 gardaí are eligible to leave. They have already been hit with pension levies and curbs on overtime - if there is a tax on lump sums announced in the budget, there may be a considerable exodus from the force, which would have to be paid for out of this year’s budget.
Michael O’Boyce questioned whether this had been the intended plan all along - to push out members approaching retirement while cutting the pay and other elements of the package for remaining gardaí. Critics argue that the consequences of losing a glut of senior staff could have a major effect on policing - for instance, 101 of the force’s 182 superintendents are qualified to seek retirement based on 30 years’ service.
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