THE GENERAL secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), David Begg, has urged the Government to extend the period of time over which it plans to reduce the deficit in the public finances.
Mr Begg said public spending cuts should be spread over the next eight years up to 2017, instead of the Government’s target of 2013, to minimise the effect the cuts have on workers.
Speaking on RTÉ 1’s Morning Ireland yesterday, Mr Begg said Ireland had space to manoeuvre.
He said that going into the recession Ireland had the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the European Union at about 20 per cent. He acknowledged this would rise “to about 34 per cent” by the end of the year.
However, Mr Begg said that compared with, for example, Italy, which has a ratio of 118 per cent, Ireland had “more headroom” than other countries.
The Ictu leader said Ireland should, therefore, take a longer period of time, “up to 2017 or 2018”, to make the adjustments.
He repeated his assertion that the Government’s goal of reducing the borrowing requirement to below 3 per cent before 2013 was “too brutal, too quick” and warned of unintended consequences if the recommendations of the McCarthy report were implemented.
“You may have unintended outcomes. You may cut a cost here but you may cause a cost somewhere else in the whole social structure, for example.”
He said cuts could be introduced over a longer period of time where “you don’t annihilate people in the process and that you could offer the possibility of a vision of an Ireland which, after the pain, is a better and a fairer country for everybody”.
Mr Begg said that the €400 million borrowed by the State each week “doesn’t look so bad” when presented in a longer-term framework.
Calling on workers to attend the national day of demonstration in early November to support Ictu’s 10-point plan for an agreed economic recovery deal, Mr Begg said the Government needed to hear the concerns of workers and union members.
Ictu is seeking the Government to deal with unemployment, private-sector pensions and home repossessions. It does not accept the Government’s budgetary strategy for dealing with the problems in the public finances.
“In the run-up to the budget, if we don’t make our concerns very vocally to the Government, there’s no point in making them on the day after the budget. It’ll be far too late.”
Mr Begg called on the Government to introduce a a legal moratorium of three years before financial institutions can repossess homes.