TENS OF thousands of people are expected to take to the streets today as part of a campaign organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu)for a “fairer” alternative to the Government’s budgetary strategy.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen has insisted, however, that protests and industrial disputes will not resolve the country’s economic problems.
He told an economic conference in Dublin yesterday that a cut of €1.3 billion in the public sector pay and pensions bill would have to be implemented in the budget. But he said the Government was anxious to work with trade unions to find an agreed way of securing these savings.
Mr Cowen again ruled out raising income tax rates next year – a key demand of the unions.
Speaking on RTÉ's Prime Timelast night, Mr Cowen said: "The present situation isn't sustainable, and we have a vision for the public service in the future. It will be a smaller service which will be one that has been outlined in various reports and need to get on with that project."
He added that the Government would try to find these cuts “on an agreed basis if possible”.
Ictu is holding demonstrations and rallies at eight locations around the country – Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Sligo, Tullamore and Dundalk – in support of its 10-point plan for a fairer way to national recovery. All of the demonstrations begin at 2.30pm.
However, employers’ group Ibec said that the Ictu demonstrations would be counter-productive and would not make any contribution towards making jobs secure.
The chairman of the public service committee of Ictu, Peter McLoone, said that the reason the protests were taking place was because the trade union movement had been engaging with the Government for the last seven months without success.
He said that the unions had cancelled a planned day of protest in March to give time for a possible agreed solution.
“The people we represent now want to vent their anger and their frustration and that is why they are taking to the streets. In the meantime, we continue our efforts to try and find a solution that will avert the protest escalating into strikes later in the month,” he said.
Ictu general secretary David Begg said that he would not speculate on the numbers likely to take part in the demonstrations.
Last February, an Ictu march and rally in Dublin attracted more than 100,000 people. But Mr Begg said there were eight separate events taking place around the country today, with a number of others being organised in Northern Ireland.
Referring to news that the Government-led jobs taskforce sat just once since it was established nine months ago, Mr Begg said: “This underlines what we have been saying about official inaction on the jobs crisis and it chimes with people’s experiences. They see a Government fixated with pumping money into the banks and sucking it out of the economy. Common sense tells you that is unsustainable . . . that it is dangerous.”
Ibec criticised both the Ictu day of action and the threatened national public sector strike scheduled for November 24th.
Ibec director of industrial relations Brendan McGinty said: “These are extraordinary times. Old solutions and old-style protests will not make one Irish person better off or their job more secure.”
Mr McGinty said that when the facts were presented, almost everybody privately accepted that reductions of income were inevitable if jobs were to be protected.
Ictu said it wanted to stress that there were no talks under way with the Government on a possible new national agreement. It said that the only discussions taking place were between the Government and public sector unions on the reduction of the public sector pay bill.