Department of Agriculture technical staff are to take industrial action from 20^th January. Although the initial action aims to cause administrative inconvenience to management without impacting on farmers or the food industry, the union says stronger action will follow if the issues are not resolved.

Over 600 agricultural officers involved are responsible for inspections of farms, meat factories and other facilities to ensure food safety and compliance with EU and Irish regulations on the production, labelling, sale and export certification of agricultural produce including live animals.

The dispute was triggered by the agriculture department’s decision to refuse IMPACT members the chance to compete for assistant principal posts, in defiance of a new civil service-wide policy that allows all qualified staff to apply for vacancies that have been approved for filling. The union says this was the latest in a series of management decisions that are putting agricultural officers’ job security at risk, while eroding their terms and conditions beyond the measures already conceded under the Croke Park and Haddington Road agreements.

IMPACT national secretary Eamonn Donnelly said the issues could be addressed in ways that save taxpayers millions of euro, while maintaining excellent services to the farming community and agriculture sector.

“The agriculture department has effectively collapsed the industrial relations process at a time when agricultural officer duties are diminishing because of rationalisation and reforms. Meanwhile, management persists in transferring their duties to higher paid civil servants and unnecessarily allocating inspection work to expensive external contractors. Both of these practices incur huge costs to taxpayers while putting our members’ jobs at risk,” he said.