Imbert: Government’s wage promises causing financial pressure

For­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of cre­at­ing a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar pub­lic-sec­tor wage and back­pay bur­den through what he de­scribed as un­re­al­is­tic elec­tion promis­es, warn­ing that the fi­nan­cial pres­sure is al­ready af­fect­ing the de­liv­ery of ba­sic pub­lic ser­vices.

Speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Im­bert claimed that ex­tend­ing a 10 per cent wage in­crease across the wider state sec­tor could push the ar­rears bill be­yond $25 bil­lion, while adding about $1.5 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

He al­so point­ed to a $2.6 bil­lion back­pay li­a­bil­i­ty aris­ing from the 10 per cent in­crease for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers alone, with an ad­di­tion­al $252 mil­lion a year in wages.