The Progressive Democrats have called on public sector workers to deliver "real public service improvements" in return for the €1.1 billion benchmarking pay awards.
The call from the junior Coalition party comes despite consistent signals from the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, that the Government will honour the award.
While 75 per cent of the awards are conditional on the delivery of certain work practice changes, the specific targets have been criticised by the Opposition as overly aspirational and lacking in detail.
The chairman of the PD parliamentary party, Mr Noel Grealish, said the benchmarking award should not be paid in the hope of service improvements.
"They are to be paid in return for real public service improvements. This is the deal the Government signed," Mr Grealish said. "The public sector must show that benchmarking and partnership as a whole deliver real and visible change for the public."
Mr Grealish was responding to a new report by the Economic and Social Research Institute which warned that payment of the pay awards could threaten the future of social partnership.
He repeated the argument of the Tánaiste and PD leader, Ms Harney, who said that the public would decide if social partnership was delivering solutions.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, claimed the PDs had adopted his call for the suspension of the award until "real service improvements" were delivered.
