The day of industrial action planned by public servants for this Thursday has been suspended following a breakthrough in talks at Government Buildings this evening.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen said meetings have concluded for the evening and will reconvene tomorrow morning.
He welcomed the fact that the industrial action planned for Thursday will not now take place and said he hoped progress can be made in the coming days.
General secretary of the Impact union, Peter McLoone told reporters outside Government Buildings that the strike was being deferred, “in the light of the progress that has been made in the negotiations over the last number of days”.
He said unions had been told earlier in the day that the Government now felt it possible to “design an alternative” to the pay cuts the Minister for Finance had been advocating. The savings would be based on an extra 12 days unpaid leave in 2010.
He said: “The purpose of putting forward the proposition on the unpaid days was that we would put a considerable part of the foundation that needs to be in place to create the alternative savings.”
“That’s now recognised, so the reason that we are going back into negotiations tomorrow, possibly into Thursday, is to complete the negotiations on the 2010 problem, so part of what we will be doing is dealing with the figures.”
Asked to comment on reports that the unpaid leave proposal could save the Exchequer €800m, he replied: “There are lots of figures going around about that. What we need to do tomorrow in order that we’re clear and agreed on the contribution is to look at precisely what the figure is.”
“This stuff is still challenging, but given the progress that we have made to date, the feeling on both sides is that, whatever challenges present, we should be able to overcome them,” he added.
Up to 250,000 nurses, teachers and other public workers held a one-day strike last week over Government plans to cut the public sector pay bill by €1.3 billion in the forthcoming Budget.
Earlier today, the HSE began cancelling between 16,000 and 18,000 procedures for Thursday in preparation of any strike action. The HSE said tonight patients who had procedures cancelled would be contacted by their local hospital tomorrow to have their appointments restored where possible.
Tonight members of the 24/7 Frontline Services Alliance welcomed the progress made in talks saying it “represents an important step forward in the search for a fair and equitable way of addressing the problems created by the current economic crisis for the delivery of public services”.