Begg says no scope for renegotiation

The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) has said that the union officials who negotiated the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform did not leave anything behind them at the table for further negotiation.

However, he said that there could be scope for clarifications or elaborations on some points.

In an address to the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) annual conference in Galway today he said that good, bad or indifferent, whether it was acceptable or not, the negotiators had got everything that was available to get.

Mr Begg said that he did not believe that the trade unions “could not go back and set up something that would fundamentally change the proposition”.

He said that the talks at Croke Park had taken four months to set up as the unions had had to establish whether there was a solid basis for negotiations.

He said that the only possible basis for that was that money, which had been deducted in the pay cuts, would be returned ultimately to staff in a bone fide way at a pace and speed to be negotiated in the talks.

Meanwhile the president of the PSEU told the conference that the proposals set out in the pay and reform deal were not ideal and fell short in some key areas but were the best that could be negotiated in the current circumstances.

Fiona Lee said that the alternative was strong industrial action.

“If we choose to reject these arrangements we must be prepared to take very significant levels of strike action to try to better the terms on offer. Before we would do that, we must believe that such strike action will achieve better results”, she said.

Ms Lee said that when talks between the public service unions and the Government broke down last December there was no commitment to look at the restoration, over time, of pay which was there now.