Unions to seek details of Government's tax plans

The Government will face trade union demands to outline its income tax plans for the next two years during talks to agree pay rises for the second half of the social partnership deal.

The "Sustaining Progress" negotiations have got off to a poor start following a decision by the country's largest union, SIPTU, to stay away in protest at the Government's transport liberalisation plans.

The general secretary of the ICTU, Mr David Begg, said the Minister for Finance's future tax changes will be "quite important".

"We would be trying to get some understanding from the Government about their intentions in the next two budgets so that we can make a reasonable assessment of what people will have in their pockets."

However, he rejected demands from employers and the ERSI that wage rises should be kept to approximately 4 per cent over the next 18 months.

"No, I don't think so. The approach to pay bargaining that we have here is to look at the expected rate of inflation and also the expected growth in productivity in the economy. That is not unique

"Labour productivity growth here in 4.6 per cent. For the European Union as a whole it is only 0.6 per cent, so Ireland has done extremely well.

"Taking it averaging out like that, one can be more optimistic," he said.

IBEC's dire predictions are simply part of the "conditioning process to moderate expectations" which is "heard all over the place at this particular time".

But he made it clear that trade unions will push for a minimum flat rate increase. "We have already made that clear to the employers," the ICTU general secretary said.

"We did not have that as a component in the first module simply because economic conditions were so bad at the time.

"There was a real fear that a number of industries employing low-paid people might go to the wall if they were confronted by that type of proportionally higher increase for lower paid people, but I think it has to be a central feature of our case this time around." Meanwhile, he rejected charges that SIPTU had pulled out of talks because of remarks made by leading Progressive Democrats, including the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, at the party's conference last weekend.

He said it was due to remarks made by Ms Harney, or attributed to her, in The Irish Times the following day.

Referring to the threatened strike at Dublin airport, Mr Begg said the union leadership had taken a strong stance to avoid a dispute and this had caused difficulty among members.

Ms Harney's comments - immediately after this - were "unfortunate".