The leader of Impact today warned the Government had to choose between conflict and co-operation in dealing with public service reform and that its refusal to rule out pay cuts "spoke volumes".
Speaking at the 29th MacGill summer school in Glenties, Co Donegal, Peter McLoone said current management strategies could not deliver the necessary transformation in public service delivery.
He said the Government should set "strict budgets" and then devolve public service reform to local managers to meet the “apparently conflicting objectives” of people's demands for better services, Government demands for massively reduced spending, and public service workers’ demands for pay protection and job security.
While sharing a platform, with economist Colm McCarthy, who recently oversaw the report on economic cuts from"An Bord Snip Nua", the Impact general secretary repeated his threat of industrial action if the Government sought to impose cuts in public service pay and pensions.
Mr McLoone said the need for change came not from a “bloated,” inefficient public service, but from the collapse in revenue caused by “misguided taxation policy and unacceptable practice in parts of the private sector, here and abroad”.
However, he added that if Government gave guarantees on jobs and pay, workers and their unions were “up for” delivering a public service transformation to maintain and expand services during the recession.
“Public services are what define a society and give it its humanity. When you strip away all the economics, the number-crunching, and the ‘slash and burn’ opportunism that characterises far too much of this debate, that remains the fundamental truth," he told his audience.
"But if the Government attempts to go down the road of imposed cuts in pay and pensions, or compulsory redundancies, there will be a reaction which will include sustained, widespread and painful industrial action, including strikes.”
In his speech to the summer school, Fine Gael TD George Lee said the public finances were in "tatters" and no other country had ever seen such a rapid slump in tax revenues as economic activity collapsed.
"The Government got carried away on fair-weather taxes such as those generated from the unsustainable housing boom. These tax revenues were, by definition, short-term because no housing boom can last indefinitely," he said.
"Despite that obvious fact, the Government made very long-term spending commitments and assumed the tax bonanza would last forever. They engaged in a massive and expensive expansion in public sector employment and services and slashed every other tax rate know to man. Taxes on the average worker were cut to the lowest combined rates in the developed world outside of Mexico and Korea."
"Savage cuts" in public expenditure and further tax increases are now inevitable, Mr Lee said.
"We need a new era where political leaders take responsibility for the mistakes they have made. They need to recognise that when they fail to live up to their responsibilities then the trust of the people is lost. Without that trust the Government cannot lead," he concluded.
