MINISTERS ARE planning to “encourage” employers to move employees from three-day to five- day working weeks, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Batt O’Keeffe has said.
Responding to the findings of this week’s Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report, Mr O’Keeffe said he had discussed this issue with Minister for Social Protection Eamon Ó Cuív yesterday. They would meet again next week, he said.
The ESRI pencilled in a larger-then-expected increase in the budget deficit for this year, due mostly to a reclassification of State payments to banks.
“We have, I suppose, an interesting figure on the level of unemployment: 64,000 are on a three- day week,” said Mr O’Keeffe.
“Eamon Ó Cuív and myself have met . . . to look at the fundamentals behind that, because we’re going to try and encourage employers to take people from a three-day to a five-day week, and we’re looking at how that can be achieved.”
In Atlanta, Georgia, yesterday, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said that the Government and the markets had already taken account of the figures in Tuesday’s ESRI report, and that it was too soon to determine whether further taxes, such as a water charge, would be necessary to reduce deficit spending.
“There’s no new information in the ESRI report,” Mr Cowen said after meeting Georgia’s governor, Sonny Perdue. “There is no extra spending over and above what we’ve already set out in our budgets this year. What they are talking about relates to the technical classification of expenditure, but it doesn’t add to our existing expenditure that we have already planned for this year.
“It’s a once-off classification issue that may or may not arise later in the year, depending on how the EU see the investments we’ve made in our banks,” the Taoiseach continued. “Next year, we will see the underlying deficit position will be 11.5 per cent this year, as we have outlined. Next year we are planning for 10 per cent.”
Asked whether there would be a water charge, he said: “We have made no budgetary decisions. We haven’t even started to discuss our budgetary strategy. When our budget is announced in December, we will set out all of our decisions.”
Asked if there could be flat rate water charges before metering was in place, Mr Cowen said: “I’m sorry, speculation in the month of June [sic] about what’s in the budget is not a worthwhile exercise. The Government in coming weeks will be sitting down, as we do every year. The Minister for Finance will set out his broad budgetary strategy. Government approval will be sought for that . . .
“Our decisions at the end of the day will be in compliance with the multi-annual agreement we have with the European Union Commission which will involve an adjustment next year of €3 billion.”
