Severe adjustments in public spending like those recommended in the McCarthy report could only be made in the context of a social solidarity pact which had as its priority the maintenance of employment, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions general secretary David Begg has warned.
Mr Begg said the report only addressed the economic consequences of the current financial turmoil “in isolation of the social impact” and the Government needed take an approach of responsibility and solidarity.
Speaking on RTE Radio's This Weekprogramme today, the ICTU leader said the consequences of adopting the report's recommendations would be "very rough for a great many people".
“Having a debate about which cuts to adopt and which not to outside of the context of what your broad social policy is going to be is meaningless.”
When asked if he supported any of the recommendations in the report, Mr Begg said he could not see “anything particularly attractive” in the report.
However, he said he would not be “entirely upset by the prospects of reducing the size of our embassies abroad”.
Mr Begg warned there was a danger of a “chasm” opening up between the population in general and official Ireland in relation to how the country should deal with the current crisis.
“The solutions to the economy’s problems do not appear to apply to the authors but to people who are less well able to bear them.
There is a huge level of disaffection against what is happening in this country and people are very unhappy at being preached at in this way.”
Mr Begg said: “There is not point in an advocacy which ignores the facts of the situation but equally we have to deal with the facts in a solidaristic way and ensure we don’t actually sacrifice the most vulnerable people in society.
On the same programme, Professor John Fitzgerald of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) called for a complete reversal of the Government’s decentralisation policy, which he described as a “disaster” that would ultimately make the public sector less efficient.
Prof Fitzgerald said the Government needed to acknowledge the policy had failed.
“We’ve acknowledged that we have had a disaster in banking...let’s acknowledge this. Reverse it and try and build a productive efficient public service out of this mess."
Prof Fitzgerald said much of the public sector “worked well” but it would have to work “better than ever” with less resources in the future.
Prof Fitzgerald also said the Government should implement up to €2.6bn of the recommendations made by the McCarthy report.