There is no certainty that a deal can be reached between the Government and trade unions on pay restoration for public service staff, a senior official in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has warned.

Assistant secretary Oonagh Buckley said the Government's capacity to pay and the expectations of the unions in forthcoming talks "might be very different".

Speaking at a conference on industrial relations in UCD on Thursday she said she wanted to caution that there was “a finite amount of money, a very finite amount of money available”.

She said that this was something all parties would need to talk about as they moved through the talks process on public service pay which is likely to get underway after Easter.

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin said he will invite public service unions to talks on unwinding financial emergency legislation that underpinned various cuts to pay and conditions over recent years after the Government receives exchequer figures for the first quarter on unwinding financial emergency legislation that underpinned various cuts to pay and conditions over recent years.

Ms Buckley told the conference people needed to be realistic in their expectations.

She said Ireland remained very fragile fiscally, still faced a financial deficit and was subject to the fiscal treaty and fiscal compact provisions as a member of the Euro zone.

“That severely restricts what might be available in terms of a very gentle unwinding of the (financial emergency) FEMPI Acts.”

Secretary general of the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) Eoin Ronayne urged that the talks look at providing a flat rate, as distinct from a percentage increase for public service staff.

The secretary general of the Impact trade Union Shay Cody, who is also chairman of the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said it was technically possible to start unwinding the FEMPI Acts "from the bottom up which would generate pretty much the same cash amount for everybody".

“On this occasion, in theory, it is doable and I think we need to have a consensus as far as we can across the trade unions that we should go after that.”

Secretary general of the Irish Congres of Trade Unions Patricia King told the conference, organised by Industrial Relations News, the Government should establish a "High Pay Commission" to examine top-level remuneration in the economy.

“While we can claim transparency in terms of the remuneration for those at the top of public and community sectors and indeed trade unions, those at the top of the private sector still hold on to their ‘secrets’.

“Nobody, other than themselves, know what they earn, but the statistics of growing inequality speak for themselves.”

Ms King said real life needed to be injected into the economy but that this could not be achieved from tax reductions.

“We won’t be able to achieve that by tax reductions. Reducing tax reduces the State’s ability to provide quality public services and supplements the profits of companies by decreasing their need to dip into their own increasing profits and provide a reasonable pay increase.”

She said all workers needed a pay increase.