Civil Service voluntary redundancy: Confirmation for some next month

More than 7,000 civil servants have expressed interest in the voluntary redundancy scheme

Northern Ireland civil servants hoping to take voluntary redundancy will hear next month if the scheme will go ahead.

The first 1,200 civil servants are due to leave on 30 September.

That is now uncertain due to the Stormont Executive's continuing disagreement on welfare reform and the budget.

The head of the Northern Ireland civil service said a decision will be taken at the executive meeting on 10 September.

In a letter to staff, Dr Malcolm McKibbin said he appreciated that "this timeframe is very close to the conditional leaving date" for the first group of leavers.

But he added, that if the decision is taken to proceed, staff will leave on the planned date.

The voluntary redundancy scheme was part of the Stormont House Agreement.

It was struck between the executive parties and the British and Irish governments in December.

The scheme allowed the executive to borrow up to £700m to fund 20,000 redundancies across the wider public sector.

Around 3,000 of those redundancies are in the civil service.

Interest

But, with the welfare reform part of the agreement collapsing, it is doubtful if the redundancy scheme can proceed as planned.

More than 7,000 civil servants expressed interest in the scheme and 1,200 of those have been told they can leave, depending on funding.

If the executive is not allowed to borrow the money, it would have to pay for the scheme by making cuts to day-to-day departmental spending.

Some public bodies, such as Translink, have said they will proceed with redundancy plans even if the Stormont House money is not available.