IMPACT has called on the Government to shore up support for the Lansdowne Road agreement among public servants by bringing forward talks on further pay restoration. In a series of media interventions over the last ten days, the union has warned that support for the agreement will evaporate if the Government treats any group more favourably than the rest.

In an interview with the Irish Independent this week, IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody warned the Government not to confuse the silence of the majority of public servants with weakness. “No group stands alone. Everybody was put into FEMPI [the law that introduced pay cuts] together and everybody's going to have to come out of it together,” he said.


Earlier, a blog by the union’s head of communications, Bernard Harbor, said the Government must stick to the position that all groups of public servants will be treated equally and within the framework of the Lansdowne Road.

But he said the agreement was “a framework, not a straightjacket” and called on the Government to open talks on a successor to Lansdowne Road in the first half of 2017. This would allow pay recovery to “be accelerated for all public servants if the exchequer continues to strengthen faster than envisaged when the agreement was signed,” he said.

This year, the Lansdowne Road agreement delivered the first positive adjustments in public service pay since before the economic crisis. Last month, the Government allocated €290 million in the budget for further pay restoration in 2017.