Government sources have said that a figure of £1bn over three years for tax cuts was no more than 'a technical figure' based on budgetary assumptions. The figure was mentioned during a meeting between Department of Finance officials and the social partners. Union sources said tonight that the figure had been rejected as inadequate, and had also demonstrated significant differences with the government on taxation issues. However, the sources close to the Department of Finance said that the figure had never been intended to be taken as an offer to the unions.
Earlier today, the employers' organisation, IBEC, gave a blunt warning that it will not sign up to a successor to Partnership 2,000, unless it includes a new method of determining public-sector pay, which brings it into line with the private sector. The Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, has consistently warned that the rate of increase, 50% over the past five years, cannot be allowed to continue.
Senior officials of the Department of Finance, briefing the social partners this evening, know that the Government wants radical reform of the current system of public pay determination as part of any successor to Partnership 2000. However, with the nurses' strike now a memory, leaders of the country's 40,000 teachers plan to press ahead with demands for a substantial pay rise.
Arriving at Government Buildings this afternoon, the General Secretary of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, Jim Dorney, said that performance-related pay was, in particular, something about his members would be very apprehensive. However, in their toughest warning yet this evening, the employers' organisation, IBEC, responded by saying that, unless these talks produced a new system which would bring public sector pay into line with private pay, there would be no agreement in the private sector. IBEC director, Turlough O'Sullivan, said that the old-fashioned pay relativities system had been discredited and had to end.
