Staff Outraged As Senior Executives Receive Better Redundancy Packages

Irish Rail staff have expressed outrage after the company gave eight senior executives more lucrative redundancy packages than those offered to lower-paid staff.

The state-owned company has confirmed that since the start of the year, eight managers have left on a voluntary redundancy package that is better than the one being offered to other staff.

The package offered to the senior executives was worth one-and-a-half times their pay, and was not capped.

If a manager earned €150,000 a year, they would walk away with €225,000, and the severance payments would rise depending on their pay.

In contrast, the current exit deal on offer to ordinary staff is capped at €130,000.

The redundancy scheme aims to reduce the number of employees at Irish Rail by 450 over four years.

Workers who leave under the scheme get an ex-gratia payment, which rises with their years of service.

The ex-gratia payment ranges from a third of annual pay for someone with up to five years' service, to two years' pay for an employee who has worked at the company for more than 30 years.

They also get a termination bonus of €30,000 on top of their statutory redundancy payment. However, the total payments cannot exceed €130,000.

Staff have also complained that the company initially gave some of them exit dates over the next few weeks, but recently told them they could not go until October. In contrast, the last of the eight senior executives left last month.

The National Bus and Rail Union said the cap on the current package drastically reduced the amount staff with longer service would get.

It said the scheme for senior managers appears to have been negotiated directly with them, and unions and staff were kept in the dark.

It wrote to the company yesterday saying it was "illogical" to delay staff leaving when the aim of its cost reducing programme is to make savings.

(H)