The finance minister Brian Lenihan is to defy union opposition and to press ahead with a public service redundancy scheme to cut the €19 billion annual wages bill.

His hand will be strengthened by new figures that reveal overtime and extra salary payments in the public service last year came to €875m. One staff member at the Health Service Executive (HSE) earned €140,986 on top of their salary. Another was paid €170,426 extra in “on-call” payments; one received €153,481 extra in “allowances” and yet another got an additional €124,629 in “other” remuneration.

Overall, HSE staff received almost €712m in extra payments, according to figures in a report issued by the comptroller and auditor general. Some 33,866 of its staff shared overtime payments of €220m; 48,511 staff got €124m in “allowances” and 61,465 received €193m in extra cash as “weekend” payments. Many staff members were paid under more than one category.

The extra payments bill for gardai was almost €340m, with one officer clocking up €83,414 in overtime. Garda overtime amounted to €138m and was shared among 13,857 members of the force. Overtime payments to prison officers were down, following the showdown with Michael McDowell, the former justice minister, over the issue. The Department of Agriculture’s bill for extra remuneration was €15m.

The figures will strengthen calls for a reform of the public service, particularly as the country officially entered a recession last week. Lenihan is expected to secure government approval over the next two weeks to shed up to 5,000 jobs by introducing a voluntary redundancy scheme next year.

In his budget next month, the finance minister will announce a scheme to secure up to 1,000 redundancies among administrative staff in the HSE.

He may also signal his intent to proceed with a public service-wide scheme in 2009, but has to await the findings of a taskforce on public sector reform next month before detailed work on the scale, cost and target areas can begin. A government source said yesterday that Lenihan is standing by remarks he made in the Dail on Wednesday night when he said he “would like to see” such a redundancy programme across the wider public service.

“The terms of any scheme will be carefully analysed to ensure it would not lose the best people in the public service,” the government source said.

Impact, the largest public service union, said last week that a redundancy programme had not been raised by the government at recent national pay deal talks and could jeopardise next month’s vote on the deal.

The executive of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions yesterday called a special delegate conference for November 17 for a final vote on the pay deal.

Ministers meet today to discuss the October 14 budget. Lenihan is expected to tell them he will impose an effective cut in departmental current spending of 1.5%-2%. The 2.5% spending increase he is planning across government is up to 2% less than inflation and amounts to a cut in real terms.

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