The two-year civil service pay freeze in Northern Ireland seems to have come to an end. Taxpayers will now have to fork out for increases of up to six per cent in civil servants’ salaries, something many in the private sector can only dream of right now. The Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) has certainly made an overly-generous offer given the state of the public finances, with the deal being hammered-out following negotiations with trade unions.
The DFP introduced a public sector pay freeze two years ago for all public sector workers earning more than £21,000. However, the department now claims that the proposed increases in pay are an attempt to ‘reform and modernise the current NICS pay structures’.
It’s extremely worrying that the department is reversing steps taken to restore sanity to the public finances. After all the country is back in a recession, and my colleague Rory Meakin explained what the horrendous public sector finance figures mean here on Wednesday. Let’s just hope that the big pay rises are not awarded to under-performing bosses already on big pay deals.