The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Joan Burton TD, has accused the government of attempting by stealth and without legal authority to significantly extend the number of employees who will be covered by the emergency legislation to cut public sector pay rushed through the Oireachtas before Christmas.

“The legislation specially says that that the cuts in pay, ranging from 5% to 8% would apply only to those who were public servants or employees of a body ‘in respect of which a public service pension scheme exits or applies to be made’. Essentially we were told at the time that the pay cuts would apply only to those who were already paying the pension levy.

“However, it has now come to the attention of the Labour Party that the HSE is writing to voluntary organisations and agencies it funds, instructing them to apply the wage cuts provided for in the Financial Emergency Interests in the Public Interest (No2) Act.

“A HSE memo to one organisation we have seen says ‘the provisions of the above (in the Financial Emergency Interests in the Public Interest (No2) Act) will also apply to staff in grant-aided agencies that are not specifically included in the legislation………….the rates of pay should reduce with effect from 1st January 2010’.

“If the HSE adopts this approach in regard to all organisations it funds it means that the pay cuts will apply to thousands of low paid workers in community and voluntary organisations. If this approach is adopted by other funding state agencies it will apply to tens of thousands of additional workers.

“How can state agencies instruct organisations to cut wages to employees who were most certainly not covered by the legislation passed by the Oireachtas.

“When the Bill was published originally ‘public servant’ was defined as including any employee or officer of a public service body. ‘Public service body’, in turn, is defined as including, inter alia, any body ‘that is wholly or partly funded directly or indirectly out of money provided by the Oireachtas or from the Central Fund or the growing produce of that Fund’.

“The Labour Party pointed out that this was a very sweeping definition that would mean the wage cuts would apply to tens of thousands of workers who are employed by bodies funded directly by money provided by the Oireachtas. This would include, NGOs, disability groups, local partnerships and Leader programmes, youth organisations and even the Red Cross.

“When the legislation came before the Dail the government introduced an amendment specifically limiting the application of the pay cuts to those public servants who were already paying the pension levy.

“Now it seems that the government is attempting by stealth to apply the legislation to all those originally specified in the Bill.

“How is it now possible that, when the Dail accepted the government’s own amendment to ensure that the pay cuts would not apply to the charitable and voluntary sector, an HSE circular can be issued that is directly contrary to the legislation?

“What legal authority does the HSE and its parent Department, Health, believe they have to seek to impose pay cuts on employees of grant aided organisations?

“The Departments of Health and Finance must now clarify if the government has instructed the HSE and other state agencies to impose pay cuts not provided for in the legislation?

“There is no legal authority to impose such cuts and I believe that this move by the HSE will be open to legal challenge in the courts.”