Examiner.ie - Army ranger allowance review in limbo after 12 years - 11 Feb 22



Army ranger allowance review in limbo after 12 years

PDForra general secretary Gerard Guinan said that members of the ARW are willing to go into any hotspot and do their duty but they are treated abysmally when it comes to their allowances.

 

Members of the elite Army Ranger Wing (ARW), who were praised for getting Irish citizens safely out of Afghanistan, are still being denied an upward review of their allowances, 12 years after it was recommended.

Under the 2010 adjudication decision the ARW was entitled to allowance reviews in 2014, 2017, and 2020, but they never materialised.

PDForra, the association which represents enlisted members of the ARW, has written to the Department of Defence seeking an urgent meeting of the Defence Sector Agreement Group to discuss.

This follows a decision of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to mandate that a scheduled increase to ARW allowance be borne by PDForra from the Sectoral Bargaining Fund, which provided all public servants with a 1% pay increase.

The Defence Sector Agreement Group consists of representatives from PDForra and RACO, which represents officers, officials from the Department of Defence, and officials from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, which together try to seek resolutions to disputes.

PDForra general secretary Gerard Guinan described the denial of allowance increases to ARW members and the requirement to take any proposed increase from the limited Sectoral Bargaining Fund they have “as equivalent to being robbed by someone so that they can pay you money they already owe you”. 

He said his association has been writing to the Department of Defence since 2019 on this issue and sought a scheduled review in accordance with the recommendations of the adjudicator, which pre-dates the current National Pay Agreement. However, he said this was objected to.

"Further, we wrote to the 'Oversight Body' for the Public Sector Stability Agreement last April who told us to discuss the matter through our (Defence Forces) Conciliation and Arbitration Scheme, but our members have not been appraised of the result of any review undertaken by the Department of Defence," Mr Guinan said.