Private sector unions meet today to decide whether or not to recommend a new national pay agreement to their members.
However, it is believed a number of issues will be unacceptable to the unions including the proposed headline increases in pay of 7 per cent over 18 months. Unions believe this will not keep pace with the rate of inflation.
Yesterday, Mr Brendan Butler of IBEC said there could be a deal within 72 hours but only if parties dropped some of their demands.
"Each of the four groups has to accept that some of its items won't receive immediate priority. I still sense that expectation levels remain somewhat unrealistic. There needs to be a severe dose of reality, or we could be here for 100 years talking," he said.
Meanwhile public sector unions and employers were due to resume a meeting later today after a breakthrough in talks on the implementation of benchmarking early this morning.
A number of outstanding items which had been "parked" due their highly contentious nature were entered into the talks yesterday evening.
These include proposed new recruitment and promotion procedures for the Civil Service and a Department of Education demand that parent-teacher meetings be held outside school hours.
Agreement on a programme for modernisation is a necessary condition for the payment of increases, averaging 8.9 per cent, which were recommended by the benchmarking body to bring the wages of 275,000 public sector employees in line with those in the private sector.