The annual conference of the PSEU has ratified the appointment of Tom Geraghty as general secretary of the union.
He succeeds Dan Murphy who has retired after 41 years in the post.
Mr Geraghy’s appointment was opposed at the conference by some delegates from the Department of Education branch.
In his address, Mr Geraghty strongly backed the social partnership process in dealing with the country’s economic difficulties and as a means of ensuring that the pain involved was spread evenly.
However, he said that social partnership was not “a panacea for all ills”.
He suggested that the trade unions had been influential in persuading the Government in the recent Budget to amend its initial proposal to limit borrowing to 9.5 per cent of GDP as this would have imposed too much hardship.
Mr Geraghty said that over its 20-year history the PSEU had worked the social partnership process to “maximum advantage”.
“In the 20 years of prosperity after 1987 we more than doubled members’ real pay and we managed from the mid-1990s on to secure pay increases of a cumulative value of between 20 and 25 per cent over and above the terms of national agreements for our members in the exchequer-funded public service through the full use of the available mechanisms in the agreements”, he said.
He described the prospect of an international body such as the IMF taking control of responsibility for the country’s finances as “simply terrifying”.
“Whatever we do we need to avoid the possibility of outsiders laying down requirements for the mass dismissal of public servants and the drastic cutting of the incomes of those who remain.”
The conference will today debate motions calling for industrial action in the event of the Government introducing cuts in pay.
