{"id":289300,"date":"2026-02-09T20:32:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T20:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/289300\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T20:32:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T20:32:47","slug":"ireland-found-in-breach-of-european-treaty-over-lack-of-defence-forces-overtime-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/289300\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland found in breach of European treaty over lack of Defence Forces overtime \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A finding against the Irish Government<\/a> for not paying members of the Defence Forces<\/a> premiums for public holidays and overtime has been described as \u201chighly embarrassing\u201d, by one of the representative organisations that took the case.<\/p>\n

In a lengthy decision published on Monday, the European Committee of Social Rights said both the prohibition on overtime across the Defence Forces and the lack of adequate provision for payment of public holiday premiums were breaches of the Social Charter.<\/p>\n

The European Social Charter is a Council of Europe treaty that guarantees fundamental social and economic rights. <\/p>\n

Lieut Col Conor King of the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers (Raco) said the Government should \u201cfinally and immediately remove the prohibition on overtime\u201d and enter into discussions to \u201censure that the rates of pay and allowances of Defence Forces members are adequate\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said neither Raco nor PDForra<\/a>, the representative body for enlisted personnel, had wanted to take the case but had had no alternative. <\/p>\n

Although considered binding, there is no mechanism for forcing the Government to address the issues raised by the decision. <\/p>\n

\u201cIreland is a signatory of the Social Charter and it is kind of highly embarrassing for the Government to be called like this by the EU when we purport to be such good Europeans and at the forefront of labour law standards in Europe,\u201d Kind said. <\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally these things do tend to lead to change,\u201d he added, in reference to a previous decision regarding Raco and PDForra being allowed to affiliate to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) and another in relation to the application of the Working Times Directive.<\/p>\n

In its decision, the committee acknowledged that many members of the Defence Forces carrying out specific duties which attract allowances \u2013 such as working at prisons \u2013 are paid additionally for public holidays and given a day off in lieu.<\/p>\n

The committee said, however, that Government, in making its case, had sought to focus on those roles where such allowances were paid but had not clearly explained why other members performing normal duties were treated differently.<\/p>\n

King welcomed that different treatments had been highlighted but said that even where allowances were paid they were often entirely inadequate. He cited a security duty allowance which is worth about \u20ac67 but could involve a member working up to 24 hours. \u201cThat\u2019s way below the minimum wage\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

He said that even raising overtime as an issue for discussion had been consistently ruled out by management. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of a review of the conciliation and arbitration scheme, which is sort of the framework within which we hold discussions with the Department of Defence and the Department of Public Expenditure, we tried to get overtime included but they refused point blank and that sort of precipitated this case,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere has just always been this view that overtime is not compatible with military service, that\u2019s been the management\u2019s position and it has been accepted by everyone, except us. But An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na are paid overtime and we can\u2019t see why it shouldn\u2019t be the same for members of the Defence Forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said there previously would not have been a mechanism for even gauging how many hours members had worked but that this was changing as the Working Times Directive is implemented.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when we are able to [know] how many more hours than the 37 to 40 that is considered normal are being worked by individuals then we will have to have that conversation about overtime.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Department of Defence was approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A finding against the Irish Government for not paying members of the Defence Forces premiums for public holidays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[65743,13308,3585,5148,1523,61,60,4106,43,125040],"class_list":{"0":"post-289300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-council-of-europe","9":"tag-defence-forces","10":"tag-department-of-defence","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-government","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-irish-congress-of-trade-unions-ictu","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-pdforra"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}