A union leader has warned of extensive industrial action across the public service from February in a bid to force the Government to reverse its pay cuts.
Blair Horan of the Civil and Public Service Union, which represents lower paid civil servants, said it would take extensive strike action to make the Government change course.
He said low-level industrial action, such as withdrawing from partnership, would not be enough to persuade the Government to reverse pay cuts.
Asked whether his members could afford to take strike action, he said members could never afford to take strike action but they could not afford the pay cut either.
Mr Horan was speaking as he arrived for a meeting of the ICTU Public Services Committee to formulate a co-ordinated campaign of resistance to the Government's cuts in public sector pay, which is expected to get under way in the coming weeks.
Mike Jennings of the Irish Federation of University Teachers said his members would be refusing to co-operate with the embargo on recruitment and promotions in universities.
He said that would create huge difficulties for the universities, but said they could not expect to operate with drastically reduced staff numbers.
He said academics would be concentrating on core functions rather than administrative tasks like keeping statistics on students.
The head of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, Liam Doran, said he expected disruption to commence before the end of the month, saying 25 January had been mentioned as a start date.
He said it was a question of directing the anger of public servants, while at the same time ensuring that all sectors of the public service were prepared to 'deliver a meaningful blow'.
He said the Government was not 'out of the woods' at all in terms of what they had done to public servants.
The Prison Officers Association General Secondary John Clinton said that his members were prepared to begin with a work-to-rule but warned that he was 'not ruling anything in or out' as the campaign progresses.
The Public Service Committee is expected to reconvene in around ten days to review the situation.
