A New Year agreement with social partners will be the key to Ireland's recovery from the recession, Taoiseach Brian Cowen has said.
Offering a full defence of social partnership, he said: "We must bring stability to the public finances. We will work with social partners to achieve that.
"I am convinced that that is the best and only way to achieve that it can be done, in a way that will be acceptable to all, that brings everyone with us. Otherwise we put at risk all that we have achieved so far," he said.
Despite demands that the Government should act quickly and unilaterally, he said: "I am sticking with (the social partnership approach) because I believe in it and I believe that I will be proved right."
The Government has asked trades unions, employers, farmers' groups and other social partners to offer their recommendations in January.
"I believe that we have the political maturity on the basis of end-year Exchequer returns to take the decisions that will be necessary," he said.
"I don't suggest that this will be easy. It has become fashionable to decry by many who have benefited most from it. I won't take criticism from that quarter," he told the Dublin Castle press conference this afternoon.
The Government wants the social partners to sign up to a package in the New Year that will cut billions off public spending. Defending his handling of the economy, the Taoiseach repeatedly voiced his determination to continue with the National Development Plan – even though all of the money for it is now being borrowed.
"Politicians are always accused of thinking in the short-term. There is a more simple approach if the Government was minded to do it, that we are not prepared to take.
"I could slash the capital investment programme by 50 per cent by €4 billion and we might find that someone could convince themselves that a simpler task lies ahead.
"This government, under my leadership, will not do that because we must invest for the future. "When people ask what are you doing for a stimulus we are borrowing €8.2 billion for capital investment. That is what we are doing and we are not going to compromise on that. These are the green-shoots of future growth. If we don't do that we put at risk the prospect of recovery and we lengthen the time in which recovery can be
achieved. So we are taking the more difficult road in the long-term interests of this country and we can only do that in the context of social partnership," he went on.
The New Year talks, he said, will "provide us with the means by which we will have a plan over a credible timeframe to deal" with the economic crisis, he said.
The plan produced offers "a sense of hope and direction" to the people that Ireland can successfully get through the recession "if we also take the necessary decisions in the short there. There is no painless, silver bullet way to do this. This can only be done by us
all pulling together.
"We faced real strategic issues in this country with far less resources available to us to swing it around, and we can do it again. It will require a great deal of leadership, from us all," said Mr Cowen, who was accompanied by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan; the Minister for
Finance, Brian Lenihan; the Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney; and the Green Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan.