There is a certain irony in gardai and nurses shaking Partnership 2000 to its foundations. Not only were both relatively quiescent groups in the past - the GRA is still outside the Irish Congress of Trade Unions - but public service workers are generally perceived to have been the chief beneficiaries of the latest generation of national agreements.
While the behaviour of the GRA, and particularly last year's "blue flu", has had a subversive effect on many trade unionists, it is the nurses' dispute that has potential to do most damage. Despite the estimated £187 million thrown at the nurses in the past two years, it is still not enough to meet their aspirations. These are, to match the average pay of other health service professionals and earn as much at the top of the scale as teachers. Yet to meet them would unravel the whole texture of public service pay.
The chairman of ICTU's public services committee, Mr Peter McLoone, who has nurses in his own union, IMPACT, said yesterday: "It's hard to avoid the conclusion we are at a defining point. If the effect of these disputes is further increases for staff nurses and the guards, I don't see how we can hold the line with the other groups."
Last May his union voted overwhelmingly for talks on a successor to Partnership 2000, which included an ambitious programme on tax reform and other issues. In November the ICTU is holding a special delegate conference on whether to enter talks on a new agreement. Now IMPACT, like every other union, faces the unpalatable prospect of holding consultative meetings of members next month against the likely background of a nurses' strike.
Mr McLoone says many members are already becoming restless with the strategy adopted last May. Among these will be other health service employees such as social workers, paramedics and white collar staff.
In the past, when national agreements collapsed, the public service usually struck its own centralised pay deal. If the nurses' dispute scuppers Partnership 2000, then the sector least likely to achieve a centralised deal will the public service.
Another senior public service trade union leader, who asked not to be identified at this stage, said he could not hold the line if nurses and gardai won still higher awards. He said national agreements would collapse, just as they had done in 1981. "The consequence in 1981 was a public service embargo for eight years. The consequence this time will be the demise of social partnership, I have no doubt about it."
Some private sector trade unionists are more sanguine about the prospects for a new agreement. The general-secretary of MANDATE, Mr Owen Nulty, sees things somewhat differently from IMPACT. He believes a national agreement can be reached, provided it contains no "straitjacket" on pay. He says the reality in the private sector is that national pay norms are being exceeded anyway with various gain-sharing schemes.
The biggest problem is in areas such as retailing. He says indigenous firms, many of them family concerns or private companies, are more afraid of the tax implications of profit sharing than the actual cost of payouts to employees. To maximise benefits for workers any new deal must have more than "just a glorified local bargaining clause" on pay.
Ireland's largest union, SIPTU, straddles the public and private sectors. Vice-president Mr Des Geraghty believes the current crises are in particular sectors, such as health, transport and construction. He says the Government must accept that these are generated by our economic success.
"The old excuse that the money isn't there to deal with the problem no longer exists." If the State, and private business, can invest huge amounts in material infrastructure then it should be possible to invest in people as well, Mr Geraghty says.
Industrial relations problems in CIE were taking place against a background of chronic under-investment in the company and those in the health services against an increasing demand from the public. He felt that the narrow public service focus on pay issues and relativities in the past needs to be widened.
ICTU general secretary Mr Peter Cassells also felt that industrial relations, and social partnership, were entering a critical new phase. "It's important we don't try to use yesterday's mechanisms to deal with today's problems.
"People's expectations have risen and that's not necessarily a bad thing, because it's rising expectations that drive the country forward. The question is how to fulfil those expectations without blowing the economy off course."