THE GENERAL secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has said that the union officials who negotiated the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform did not leave anything behind them at the table for further negotiation.
However, he said there could be scope for clarifications or elaborations on some points.
In an address to the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) annual conference in Galway yesterday, he said that good, bad or indifferent, whether it was acceptable or not, the negotiators had got everything that was available to get.
Mr Begg said that the trade unions “could not go back and set up something that would fundamentally change the proposition”.
He said that the talks at Croke Park had taken four months to set up as the unions had had to establish whether there was a solid basis for negotiations.
He said that the only possible basis for that was that money, which had been deducted in the pay cuts, would be returned ultimately to staff in a bona fide way at a pace to be negotiated in the talks.
“I had to be sure that that was the situation and I am sure that that is the situation; that there is a bone fide dimension to it,” he said.
Mr Begg also said that there was a huge problem of dealing with industrial action in the public service as the public could not be moved out of the line of fire.
“It is not a matter of your own personal courage or your own willingness to make sacrifices.
“The huge problem for public servants is that the public is involved in anything that happens and that [presents] a huge moral dilemma for people,” he said.
Addressing the positives and negatives in the proposed agreement, Mr Begg said that on the one hand, there were difficulties of trust with a Government which had walked away on three occasions from making a deal.
He said that on the other hand the proposed new agreement contained an important principle that the pay cuts that had been imposed were not “once and forever”.
He said that there was also “the security of employment conditions, pensions and controlling of outsourcing”.
In his speech, Mr Begg strongly criticised what he termed the deflationary mindset that had been behind the last budget, which he said was driving the country deeper into a slump that it would be lucky to emerge from in a decade.
He said that this had resulted in the loss of 75,000 jobs.
Meanwhile, the president of the PSEU told the conference that the proposals set out in the pay and reform deal were not ideal and fell short in some key areas, but were the best that could be negotiated in the current circumstances.
Fiona Lee said that the alternative was strong industrial action.
“If we choose to reject these arrangements we must be prepared to take very significant levels of strike action to try to better the terms on offer.
“Before we would do that, we must believe that such strike action will achieve better results,” she said.
Ms Lee said that when talks between the public service unions and the Government broke down last December there was no commitment to look at the restoration of pay, over time, which was there now.
“Last December we had no guarantee about the security of your job. We now do.
“Last December we were concerned that the pension you have worked hard for could be destroyed.
“Now, we are in a process of trying to agree a new scheme for future employees. Last December there was no certainty that your current level of pay could be protected. We now have an agreement on that.”
“All of these issues, I know, were taken as a given in the past. We did not even contemplate that anyone would seek to touch these fundamental aspects of our pay and conditions of employment.
“Unpleasant as it may seem, times have changed dramatically and our focus in recent months as a union has been to try to protect, as best we can, pay and conditions of employment,” she said.