The Tanaiste has indicated that the Government is prepared to look at "new and imaginative mechanisms for the management of change" for groups such as nurses in any successor to Partnership 2000. However, she also warned there could be no new agreement "unless we honour the present one".
Speaking at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Ms Harney reiterated the Government's position that "pay moderation has been central to the Irish economic success story of recent years".
But in an apparent attempt to build on the Government's agreement with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions last Monday that public service pay would have to be managed in a new way, she accepted that some alternative to profit-sharing in the private sector had to be found for State employees as well.
Her speech is thought to reflect the thinking in discussion documents on public service pay due to be considered shortly by the ICTU. These are expected to propose that new criteria be established for determining pay rates to replace the present inflexible system of relativities.
Looking towards a successor to Partnership 200, she said: "Pay moderation does not mean that working people are not entitled to share fully in Ireland's economic success. What it means is that we cannot trigger a spiral of wage inflation that will destroy the Irish economic miracle and leave us all worse off within a very short period of time.
"The challenge facing us now is to devise new ways to ensure that all sections of society are able to share in our economic success. In the private sector there will have to be much greater emphasis on profit-sharing and employee share ownership than has hitherto been the case."
Turning to the public sector, Ms Harney said the situation was much more complex. "Profit-sharing can happen, and is happening, in many of the semi-State companies, but profit-sharing is not an option in most areas of the non-commercial public service.
"If social partnership is to continue we will have to modernise our whole system of public sector pay determination. We will have to devise new and imaginative mechanisms for the management of change and the introduction of new technology.
"I am willing to explore new options in this area and the Government is willing to explore options in this area. Such options could be an integral part of a new agreement, Partnership 2003.
"But we cannot build a new agreement unless we honour the present one. We tried free-for-all collective bargaining in this country back in the 1980s and it didn't work; that is why we embraced the social partnership model."