THE GOVERNMENT is going to stretch the Croke Park agreement “to the limit” to bring about change in the public sector, according to Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin.
If the euro zone crisis deepens and Ireland fails to recover, “all bets are off” in relation to the agreement, he warned.
However, Mr Howlin, speaking yesterday at the MacGill Forum, defended the achievements of the agreement so far and said we couldn’t afford not to have it.
Under the deal, 6,000 fewer people would be employed in the public sector next year and massive transformation was under way in many areas without any disputes, he pointed out.
Although Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte was reported at the weekend as suggesting the agreement might have to be renegotiated, Mr Howlin claimed his remarks had been taken out of context. What he had said was that the Government was committed to Croke Park but this was conditional on delivery of commitments.
He denied that the trade unions had any veto on changes to the agreement but stressed the importance of dialogue and social partnership as part of the democratic process.
Mr Howlin said Ireland would have little influence on how the euro zone crisis ended but he was optimistic a solution would be found and Ireland would be “set fair for recovery”.
“But if something else happens all bets are off across all areas of government, and that’s understood. We are in a dangerous place and have been for some time.”
Earlier, Minister for Jobs and Innovation Richard Bruton defended the budget as a “balanced and fair” package which addressed the Government’s top priority of job creation. He also defended the Cabinet’s decision not to transfer much of the cost of sick pay from the State to employers, saying it would have been wrong when so many employers were “hanging by their fingertips”. The proposal had been mooted by Labour Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton but didn’t get through Cabinet.
Mr Bruton said every budget was about choices and on this occasion the Government had sought to create opportunities for employment while minimising unfairness by not increasing income tax or reducing social welfare payments.
Referring to the verdict of ESRI economists that the budget was regressive, he said there would always be individual issues that would prove difficult. Mr Bruton admitted the economic challenge facing the country was more acute than it had been during the summer and described the unemployment figures of the last quarter as disappointing.
Irish society had to prioritise the creation of employment as the goal around which people would gather, he said, and this would take systems out of their comfort zone. Bold ambitions would have to be set to change our “dysfunctional” political system, a public service that was not sufficiently challenged, and an economic system that got crowded out by “easy money” from the property boom.
He promised the Government’s first annual jobs action plan, to be published in January, would transform job creation by “holding people’s toes to the fire” on commitments. The plan would be reviewed quarterly just as Ireland’s bailout was by the troika so it wouldn’t be a once-off document to be quickly forgotten.
Mr Bruton said Irish people had to be “rapid adaptors” to cope with challenges such as growing population, global warming and an ageing population. However, there were grounds for confidence that Ireland would be able to take on these challenges.