New legislation, which is expected to become law over the next couple of months, will remove legal barriers to redeployment between different parts of the civil and public service. The change will ease redeployments into the civil service under Croke Park-Haddington Road redeployment provisions.

The Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) (Amendment) Bill effectively redefines the public service, for redeployment purposes, to include virtually all civil and public service employers except commercial state bodies and their subsidiaries.

The proposed legislation reaffirms that any redeployment must be done within the terms of collective agreements – in this case, Haddington Road and the Croke Park agreement. The bill also explicitly protects the basic pay and pensions of redeployed staff, and will ensure that their length of service is unaffected by redeployment. Redeployed staff will have the same rights as existing staff in the organisations they move to.

The bill will also amend existing legislation to give statutory effect to the recent practice of opening senior civil service promotion competitions to outsiders.  IMPACT has long-campaigned for this change.