Frontline staff form anti-cuts alliance

Unions and associations representing around 100,000 public servants who provide round-the-clock frontline services have said that they will not accept cuts proposed in the recent McCarthy report.

At a press conference in Dublin today the Irish Nurses Organisation, Psychiatric Nurses Association, The Garda Representative Association, the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, PDFORRA (which represents defence forces personnel) and the Prison Officers Association and Siptu's Nursing Branch, joined together to form a new alliance to campaign against the McCarthy recommendations.

While some of the unions, such as those representing nurses, indicated that they could take industrial action if cuts to pay and working conditions were put in place, others pointed out that it would be unlawful for them to go on strike and that they would seek to persuade the Government not to implement McCarthy.

The general secretary of the INO, Liam Doran, said the McCarthy report was a flawed document which contained a management bias. He said the McCarthy recommendations had the simple agenda of "cutting, slashing and burning" services for those most in need of them.

The chairman of the alliance, Des Kavanagh of the PNA, said that for the Government to target frontline workers was irresponsible and must be stopped.

"McCarthy's recommendations seek to revert nurses and public service workers to pre-1970s conditions of employment," Mr Kavanagh said. "We will never accept that working unsocial hours - at night, weekends and bank holidays - should attract no additional earnings."