GARDA sergeants and inspectors will avoid a pay freeze from Friday after announcing they will re-ballot their members on the Lansdowne Road agreement.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will defer a freeze on increments until the result of a vote of the almost 2,000 members of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors is known in August.

The association said it will recommend an acceptance of a departmental proposal “based on a government commitment to deal with issues around garda pay”.

The move comes just days after the Garda Representative Association, representing over 10,600 rank and file gardai, rejected the same Department of Justice proposals.

The department offered to defer a freeze on increments if the garda bodies recommended that their members accept the agreement, which comes into force on Friday.

It offered to restore a €4,017 rent allowance to new recruits' pay if gardai resumed working an extra 30 unpaid hours per year.

AGSI’s National Executive met today to consider the proposals.

President Antoinette Cunningham said it welcomed reassurances from government officials and garda management that issues surrounding garda pay will be dealt with in a review of the garda organisation, to be completed within six months.

“We are satisfied that key issues for AGSI members including future pay negotiating rights and the European Social Rights Committee ruling (on the right to strike and negotiating rights) will be addressed urgently," she said.

"These matters were central to our rejection of the Lansdowne Road Agreement initially."

The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland is also still outside the Lansdowne Road deal.

Online Editors