Unions have warned the Government that they cannot solve the economic crisis at the expense of workers.
Responding to reports that the Minister for Finance intends to implement public sector pay cuts, SIPTU President Jack O'Connor said all sectors of society had to play their part in resolving the crisis.
However, he said there would be huge resistance if the Government tried to impose pay cuts on workers.
Peter McLoone of IMPACT said nobody in the trade union movement wanted to turn their back on the problem, but that he had no mandate to discuss pay cuts.
He said it would not help the problem to slash pay and that the public sector accounted for just a sixth of the workforce.
Elsewhere, opposition parties have reacted dismissively to plans by the Finance Minister to cut spending and jobs in the public sector to improve the state of public finances.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman said that no decision had been announced by Brian Lenihan and that the announcement showed that nothing had been done in the Budget.
'If you had a penny for every plan announced by Government you'd be a wealthy man', Deputy Bruton said.
The Labour Party's Seanad finance spokesperson said that the public finances were an utter disaster and that previous Government estimates on borrowing income from taxation were Alice in Wonderland-stuff.
Senator Alan Kelly said that redundancies would add to costs in the short term and deliver no growth.
He added that Budget 2009 was now an irrelevant document.
Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey defended the Government's handling of the economy.
He said we were living in extraordinary times as witnessed by the fact that the IMF had to revise its figures within a month of publishing projections for all of the economies of the world, at around Budget time last October.
Mr Dempsey said the Minister for Finance had indicated he did not want to further increase taxes as they had already been increased by as much as was possible without damaging the economy
Last night, the Government announced that it is to cut public spending by an additional €2bn this year.
Plans for increased taxes and public sector pay cuts are to be introduced in a matter of weeks.
In a newspaper interview, Mr Lenihan said that while there was no scope to raise income tax in 2009, savings could be achieved by curbing public sector spending.
He said that while he did not wish to pre-empt what Taoiseach Brian Cowen would say to the social partners, the need for urgent action was clear.
He told the Irish Independent that improving the state of the public finances, future budgets could see a broadening of the tax base.
He called for the report of the Commission on Taxation to be published as soon as possible to show how this would be done.
The Government indicated to the EU Commission that it intends to save €2bn this year. A further €4bn is to be saved in the next two budgets through taxes and spending cuts.
Mr Lenihan also said that the country's banks would receive a further bailout if it was needed.
The Department of Finance has issued new estimates forecasting that 120,000 jobs will be lost this year and next.
