Labour leader Pat Rabbitte yesterday called for "genuine" public service reform from the next round of benchmarking, saying the public good would have to take priority over vested interests.
He accused the Government of abdicating its responsibility to get value for money in the last round.
Elaborating on the commitment he made at the Labour Party conference over the weekend to deal with the scandal of the 130,000-long queue for driving tests, Mr Rabbitte said it was just one element in a bigger picture of Government incompetence in the management of the public service.
"I am committed to the necessity of introducing innovation and public service reform through negotiation. But it is up to the Government, as the management, to get a quid pro quo for the taxpayers' money it put on the table. That has not happened up to now," he told The Irish Times.
Mr Rabbitte said the Government had abdicated its responsibility to negotiate real reform in the first round of benchmarking and behaved as if it expected the unions to do the job for them.
"It is especially wrong that we don't have any paper trail so that we can analyse the real significance of the whole benchmarking process," he said.
In his keynote speech to the Labour conference, Mr Rabbitte said that his party supported social partnership.
"Change in the workplace and the modernisation of our public services should be negotiated, but no interest group has the right to veto changes which are necessary for the public good.
"When 130,000 young people can't get a driving test, Labour will not shrug its shoulders and walk away. The rights of those young people and the imperative of road safety overrides any other consideration," he said.
He added that if the industrial relations system could not provide for 130,000 young people waiting for driving tests, there was something wrong with the system.
Mr Rabbitte also said that if social partnership could not address the serious issue of job displacement and exploitation in the workplace, then there was something wrong with social partnership. He was emphatic if Labour and Fine Gael were elected to government there would not be an increase taxes. He distanced himself from those on the left who have always regarded high taxes as an essential component of a welfare state.
"There are some for whom the only measure of commitment to social justice is your willingness to increase taxes on working people. I have never believed that. For me the yardstick is fairness - justice in the tax code and everyone paying their share, something that has not been happening. What is needed now is not more taxation, but fair taxation," he said.
A senior Fine Gael figure welcomed Mr Rabbitte's conference speech saying it showed the alterative government was united on the central issues of public policy, taxation, the health service and law and order. "Pat Rabbitte and Enda Kenny are saying the same things and that augurs well," he said.
Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said last night that he welcomed Labour's belated conclusion that low tax rates had been the correct policy position all along.
He asked if, in light of Mr Rabbitte's long held opposition to low tax rates, the Labour Party leader could be relied upon to keep this new-found commitment.
Speaking on TV3's The Political Party last night, Mr Rabbitte repeated his belief that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will do a deal with Sinn Féin to retain power if the numbers add up.
"It should make the country jittery. And it should make Fianna Fáil supporters jittery. And when Michael McDowell says that Mr Ahern will do business with Sinn Féin, maybe Mr McDowell is speaking from inside information."
