IMPACT Municipal Employees’ and Local Government & Local Services Divisions have voted to accept proposals that will end Irish Water’s policy of replacing permanent jobs with temporary and acting posts. Under proposals worked out at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), a minimum of 100 jobs will be regularised before 30^th June next.

The posts involved will be determined by an independent body. Only union members will have an opportunity to make submissions in respect of the posts.

The agreement follows a ballot of nearly 1,000 IMPACT local authority members working on service level agreements (SLAs).

IMPACT national secretary Peter Nolan said the proposals recognise the neccessity to engage with unions representing local authority staff providing services to Irish Water under the SLAs. "Irish Water's business plan was produced with no consultation with the unions, and the utility was unable to say in what areas it proposed to reduce staff as part of its business plan."

Peter said the union's objective at the WRC talks was to prevent the casualisation of the workforce, and added that the new proposals were significant in that they commited to establishing permanent posts.

"Irish Water will have to provide a rationale acceptable to the union if they want to take jobs out of the system. Under the terms of the agreement, no existing jobs will be displaced to contractors and an additional 100 new local authority posts have been agreed to accelerate the leak detection programme ("Find and Fix").

"While these posts will be temporary for an initial two years, the union will continue to put pressure on Irish Water to make the posts permanent, and IMPACT will co-operate with the “Find and Fix” programme and the rollout of the "Maximo" system.

"Our agreement on the backfilling of local authority posts will also be honoured, while arrangements around non-domestic water billing will be subject to a separate process using the same principles," he said. The proposals also commit to improvements in the transport fleet.

Peter added "These proposals put a constraint on job reductions. The overwhelming response from our members was crucial in achieving a settlement, which means that 95% of the workforce will be in permanent posts."