THE Budget has highlighted the need for an agreed minimum wage, according to Mandate, the union of retail and bar trade workers.
While welcoming the tax provisions in Wednesday's Budget, the union's general secretary, Mr Owen Nulty, said the removal of tax liability from people earning less than £100 a week had highlighted the fact that there were more than 80,000 people earning as little as £79-£100 a week.
"These statistics confirm what this union has been saying for many years and highlight the need for further action in order to adequately address this ongoing problem."
He said we were failing to tackle the problems of social exclusion. "We remain a two-tier society of haves and have-nots, and until this is addressed nobody should be taking pride in this Irish economic success story."
Mr Nulty also criticised the decision not to make any provision for childcare. "In the retail trade the pattern of work has changed dramatically in recent years. Widespread Sunday trading and late opening have increased the need for childcare facilities among those working in the retail sector, and the Government's failure to introduce proper measures in this area is an opportunity missed to reduce the pressure on our members and their families."
The failure to increase support for the unemployed and marginalised significantly has been attacked by the Unemployed Workers' Group of the Dun Laoghaire and Bray areas.
"With an estimated £1.4 billion with which to radically tackle the structural causes of poverty in this country, this Budget now tells us, as poor people, what the destruction and despair in our lives and our communities had already told us - you can, and will, wait forever," it said in a statement.
"This Budget has made clear that our exclusion is an integral part of Government policy.
"We must now recognise that we can rely only on ourselves, as we have been forced to do for so long, no longer waiting for more rhetoric from those who have clearly stated what interests and whose needs they represent.
"We thus call on all those representing the unemployed, the marginalised and the excluded within the so-called `Partnership' process to wake up and, recognising the message of this Budget, to now stand alongside the poor in our own efforts to establish ourselves as equals among equals."
The Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union has elaborated on its earlier statement, saying that the tax cuts in the Budget would be partially made up for by real wage cuts, "given that wage increases under Partnership 2000 ran behind inflation last year".