Vol. 375 No. 1
asked the Minister for Finance in respect of each Vote in the 1988 Estimates for the Public Service, as published, the amount of (i) the pay savings from expenditure reduction measures decided by the Government and (ii) the additional ongoing pension costs arising from redundancies which will be a consequence of these measures, as referred to in page V of the Estimates Volume.
77.
asked the Minister for Finance in respect of each Vote in the 1988 Estimates for the Public Service, as published, the estimated number of (i) Civil Service (ii) other public service (iii) other, officers and servants reflected in the pay savings in 1988 from expenditure reduction measures decided by the Government and the estimated (a) lump-sum redundancy and (b) other lump-sum, payments costs, as referred to in page V of the Estimates Volume.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 75 and 77 together. Pay savings in individual Votes for 1988 arising from expenditure reduction measures decided by the Government form only part of an overall pay saving on foot of natural wastage, overtime reductions, career breaks, job sharing and voluntary early retirement. These reductions have resulted in the Exchequer pay allocation incorporated in the published Estimates being 70 million below the 1987 figure.
An overall reduction in public service numbers of the order of 9,000 is envisaged in the 1988 Estimates.
In view of the voluntary nature of the job-sharing, career break and early retirement schemes and of the possible scope for redeploying surplus staff within the public service, it would not be meaningful at this stage to specify on a vote by vote basis the staff reductions arising solely from expenditure reduction measures or to predict the pattern of redundancies which will result in any area from these reductions. For these reasons and because of the differing entitlements of individual public servants under the redundancy and pensions arrangements it is not possible at this stage to provide accurate figures for pension, redundancy and other lump sum payments.
