The Tanáiste Ms Mary Harney has said social partnership is vital for our continued prosperity.
Speaking at a conference organised by Manpower Ireland, Ms Harney said: "It would be a great loss if social partnership, having successfully helped us to solve the crisis of near national bankruptcy, high unemploymet and mass emigration, didn’t adapt to the challenge of sustaining success."
She said: "It was more than the Government simply trading tax cuts for wage moderation and industrial peace."
Ms Harney said the process has helped sustain economic and social progress by developing "a shared analysis of the major challenges facing the State".
The social partnership has come under attack in recent weeks from employers who say agreements have not been kept and wages have been allowed to spiral, seriously eroding the economy’s competitiveness.
IBEC described the current Programme for Prosperity and Fairness as a "a woeful experience for employers".
The group's director general, Mr Turlough O'Sullivan, said recently that while partnership "was wonderful while it worked, maybe it has come to the end".
He also said IBEC would have reservations about participating in another partnership deal.
But Ms Harney said social partnership is essential "to increase productivity and link what we pay ourselves to that productivity".
"And to minimise the difference between what an employer pays and what an employee receives, the so-called ‘tax wedge’."
