The Government's "obsession" with cutting tax rates is interfering with genuine tax reforms, the president of IMPACT, Mr Michael Lynch, has told the opening session of the union's biennial conference in Bunratty.
The union's national secretary, Mr Paddy Keating, said the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, had disregarded all the available advice to introduce an inflationary Budget that benefited the well-off.
Out of £517 million provided in the 1998 Budget for income tax and PRSI cuts, £104 million, or 20 per cent, had been spent on reducing the top rate of income tax from 48 per cent to 46 per cent.
Those on higher incomes, Mr Keating said, also gained from increases in personal allowances and from the reduction in the standard rate from 26 per cent to 24 per cent. The failure to increase significantly the width of the standard band rate would, on the other hand, increase the numbers paying tax at the higher rate.
Mr Lynch said the Government had undermined partnership with the unions last December when it prioritised tax cuts over tax reform in the Budget.
"You don't build support for partnership by working a three-card trick on PAYE taxpayers," he said. "The real problem is not that we pay too much tax as a country. The problem is that ordinary working people are paying too much, while others get off scot-free."
Union recognition was often seen as an issue only in the private sector, but the union had its "own recognition problems, particularly in the community and voluntary sector, where we have seen a huge growth in IMPACT membership".
"Make no mistake," Mr Lynch said, "if employers in the private sector don't have to recognise unions, it won't be long before some public sector employers ask themselves `Why not us too?' "