The welcome and long-overdue restoration of the Haddington Road hours earlier this month was the best demonstration yet of the stronger voice and better protection civil servants have gained since the creation of Fórsa less than five years ago.

As the union’s newly appointed deputy general secretary – with responsibility to lead its Civil Service Division – I was proud to be at our recent delegate conference and witness the palpable unity and determination of activists representing over 80,000 workers, including 30,000 hard-working civil servants.

With both the worst of the pandemic and the Haddington Road hours campaign behind us, you could feel the force of our new union.

But only the foolish rest on their laurels, and the many challenges ahead of us will demand the same determination and commitment that got us here.

The whole trade union movement now looks to Fórsa to lead on the big challenges like pay, the cost-of-living crisis, keeping up the momentum on remote and blended working, and getting access to affordable housing, childcare and other public services.

That’s why my priority as the head of Fórsa’s Civil Service Division is to build our collective strength – our capacity to protect and deliver for working people – by driving union recruitment and building density.

By density, I mean the proportion of civil servants who are union members.

There was no question about joining the union when I first entered the public service as a teenager. The day I started, at what we then called Dublin Corporation, I was handed an application form with a smile and an assurance that “everyone here is in the union.”

It was understood that this was the source of the collective strength that protects workers.

When they try to pit public servants against our colleagues in the private sector, our detractors only reinforce the point. Because all the conditions we enjoy – from decent maternity arrangements to a pension you can live on – are built on the fact that most of us are in the union.

But we have to work to keep it that way. That means all of us – union officials, activists, and members – must be in the business of encouraging everyone in our workplace to sign up to union strength.

Before my recent move, I spent a few years heading up the union’s Health and Welfare Division. I was proud of the protections we won for health workers in the torrid times of the pandemic.

Now I’m looking forward to working with civil servants again. In my former role as head of IMPACT’s Civil Service Division, I worked hard to develop positive relationships with colleagues in the CPSU and PSEU.

Together we won an agreement to achieve access for civil servants to the State’s industrial relations machinery – the Labour Court and Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), where every other worker in Ireland can get a hearing.

Derek Mullen, my friend and immediate predecessor in this division, has been working hard to bring this over the line. Like Derek, I believe we need to retain the departmental councils that deal with workers’ issues in each civil service department.

But the civil service-wide general council has ossified into an employer-friendly vehicle for frustration and delay. It’s used to block any worker’s legitimate individual issue or collective dispute.

Working with your elected representatives on the union’s civil service executive, I intend to finish what we started together and ensure that each civil servant has the same opportunity to be heard in the WRC and Labour Court as every other worker.

We’ve achieved a lot together in Fórsa, including Derek’s sterling work in bringing home the blended work framework earlier this year.

Everyone felt the value of their trade union membership then and during the pandemic, and I want to strengthen and deepen that valuable protection for every civil servant well beyond the Covid era.

That requires all of us to copper-fasten union strength by making sure that everyone we work with knows about the benefits of being a Fórsa member and wants to be part of the union. I’ll give it my all, and I hope that you’ll join me.