A proposal that unions and employers should be bound by Labour Court recommendations for a trial period of three years has been made by the human resources director of IBEC, Mr Turlough O'Sullivan. It made sense "to use the services of a court that is expert and independent rather than put jobs at risk unnecessarily by engaging in `seventies style' adversarialism".

Mr O'Sullivan was speaking at the annual conference of the Institute of Public Administration in Dun Laoghaire yesterday. He also criticised public sector pay claims "well in excess" of terms agreed in agreements as a major threat to social partnership. However, another speaker at the conference, Civil and Public Service Union general secretary Mr Blair Horan, challenged Mr O'Sullivan's views on both issues. Mr Horan said that far from making conflict resolution easier, the introduction of binding arbitration could lead to workers avoiding the court and resorting prematurely to industrial action. On public sector pay, and particularly the surge of restructuring claims under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PCW), Mr Horan said: "The problem with the PCW was not whether arbitration was binding or not, but the absence of any arbitration at all in restructuring claims. By the time arbitration came in with disputes such as the nurses, it was too late."

Mr Horan said that Mr O'Sullivan's proposal was worth discussing within the context of social partnership but he felt that, at this stage, it was a step too far from the "voluntarist" tradition.

Mr O'Sullivan said the main challenge facing Irish society today was to protect "the hard-won competitiveness and success of the past decade". Social partnership had laid the basis for "phenomenal" growth. "I believe that to nourish this delicate flower that is consensus, real leadership is required from all of us social partners - Government, employers, trade unions and indeed the `voluntary pillar'. Real leadership in my view will involve courage to stand over agreements freely entered into and fully understood at the time they were negotiated."