WHO IS BETTER PAID?

Is public sector pay:

(a) 40% higher than the private sector; 20% higher; around the same. Reports by well-respected sources claim all three figures are correct. In fact the CSO is responsible for two sets of figures used on opposite sides of the debate.

The raw CSO statistics show public sector pay is 40% higher than in the private sector in general. The respective pay rates are €658.30 in the private sector compared to €921.74 in the public sector, or €34,232 and €47,930 pa. However, part-timers are counted as well as full-timers, and there are fewer of those in the public sector, which skews these figures a little.

Yet a recent report by Davy stockbrokers concluded there was a similar gap between public and private sector pay of 40%. It put average public sector wages at €47,400, compared to €33,900 in the private sector.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform puts average public sector pay at €53, 651, around a fifth higher than in the private sector. This excludes semi-states and rounds up the working week to 40 hours. This, I believe, is the fairest estimate.

Then along came another report from the CSO. This valued public and private sector pay at around the same.

It managed to do so by extracting the highly paid semi-states from the public sector and putting them into the private sector. Basically, it compares the public sector with union members in large companies with permanent contracts and fails to put any value on public sector perks such as sick pay and security.

The CSO must be given the benefit of the doubt – but isn’t it open to concerns over a potential conflict of interest by getting involved in this debate at a particularly sensitive time?