I propose to take Questions Nos. 158 and 162 together.
The Water Services Act 2013 provided for the establishment of Irish Water as a subsidiary of Bord Gáis Éireann to be formed and registered under the Companies Act.
A fundamental underpinning of the water reform programme is to ensure that the skills and experience built up over many years in local authorities are put to best use for the long-term benefit of the customer and that there is no negative impact on service to customers during the transition. The Water Services (No. 2) Act 2013 transferred statutory responsibility for water services to Irish Water and provided for local authorities to act as agents for Irish Water, with this relationship being expressed through Service Level Agreements. The majority of the existing staff remain employees of local authorities working under such arrangements from 1 January 2014. As such, no staff transferred from local authorities or from other public sector positions to Irish Water.
Any employees of Irish Water who came from the local authority sector or from the public service sector immediately prior to taking up a post with Irish Water applied for advertised posts and were recruited through a competitive process.
Irish Water is currently recruiting to build up the internal capabilities required within the organisation and the number of staff employed is an operational matter for the organisation. It was agreed by the Steering Group for the Water Sector Reform programme that, to ensure skills within the sector were fully availed of in building up the new organisation, competitions for positions in asset management, capital delivery and operations would be restricted to staff in the partner organisations i.e. Bord Gáis Éireann, local authorities and my Department in the first instance. Open competitions are held for all other positions and details of these are available on Irish Water’s website www.water.ie. Data supplied by Irish Water indicate that at present 310 staff appointments have been made in Irish Water. The breakdown of these staff in terms of their employment immediately before recruitment is as follows: 59 were recruited from Bord Gáis Éireann; 107 from Local Authorities; 5 from my Department and the balance, 139, were externally recruited.
I and my Department will not necessarily have access to details of expenditure and other organisational matters in relation to Irish Water. In this context, and to support and assist public representatives in their role, my Department has requested Irish Water, on behalf of myself and Minister O’Dowd, to take early action to ensure that public representatives are regularly briefed on matters pertaining to the organisation and operation of the utility. Irish Water is currently considering how best to support and respond to the Parliamentary and public representation needs of elected representatives at national and local level.
Pending the establishment of these arrangements, my Department requested the information sought in the questions from Irish Water in relation to salaries and I can indicate that the salaries of the 310 employees of Irish Water can be broken down as follows:
|
Salary
|
Staff
|
|
Less than €70,000
|
183
|
|
€70,000 - €79,999
|
42
|
|
€80,000 - €89,999
|
35
|
|
€90,000 - €99,999
|
21
|
|
€100,000 - €124,999
|
19
|
|
€125,000 - €149,999
|
9
|
|
Over €150,000
|
1
|
|
-
|
310
|
The employment terms and conditions for Irish Water staff are a matter for the company and I understand that these are in line with the arrangements applying with Bord Gáis Éireann. Bord Gáis has in place a competitive market based pay model. The model offers market based pay ranges for all employees which includes a pay at risk element called Performance Related Award (PRA). A pay freeze will remain in place until 2016 as this is a key element of reducing overall payroll costs within the Group. As such, Irish Water does not pay increments or any form of automatic pay award; the pay model applied allows for part of salaries to be placed at risk and this element of pay is only earned subject to performance.
In this model, where an employee does not meet expectations they will not be eligible for a performance award and underperformance will be dealt with under the Irish Water Disciplinary Procedure and will lead to sanctions up to and including dismissal. Performance pay will be based on a structured performance review and requires company performance, business unit performance and individual performance metrics to have been met.
I also understand that no bonuses have been paid to Irish Water staff, but I have asked the company to set out the basis and content of the model as applied to Irish Water contracts of employment, including the criteria against which high performance will be evaluated and the kinds of targets (at company and division or grade levels) against which such performance may be bench-marked.
To date Irish Water has provided my Department with the following information in relation to the arrangements on the performance related award, which is applied across Irish Water as follows and does not apply to the Managing Director of Irish Water:
|
Staff Numbers
|
Maximum % of Performance Related Award
included in contract
|
|
50
|
2.75%
|
|
165
|
6.5%
|
|
65
|
14%
|
|
29
|
15%
|
|
309
|
|
The amount of the performance pay will be a function of corporate performance, business unit performance and individual performance. The figures outlined above illustrate the percentage to be allocated if an individual receives a 'Fully Meets Expectations’ performance rating. When an individual receives a “Does Not Meet Expectations” performance rating, no award will be made.
