Taoiseach Brian Cowen has indicated that confronting the new economic realities facing the country will necessitate public sector pay cuts and cuts in social welfare in December's Budget.
Speaking at Fianna Fáil's annual Wolfe Tone commemoration in Bodenstown, Co Kildare today, Mr Cowen said that no economic or social interest could absent itself from the effort to achieve stability in the State's finances and begin the path to economic recovery.
"No economic or social interest can be beyond the scope of the painful adjustments which are now required," he said during his address to some 300 party members at the Co Kildare graveyard.
Asked later was he referring to cuts in public sector pay and social welfare, Mr Cowen said: If we look at this in a traditional way where you simply cut the provision of the services themselves, the level of adjustment that that will represent would denude our public services to an extent that would not be publicly acceptable.
"People who depend on public services, we have to protect them to the best extent that we can," he said.
During the course of his address, Mr Cowen said that the framing and passing of the upcoming Budget, where cuts of some €4 billion will be made, would present the Government with its biggest challenge since it came into office, and would be a vital step to future survival.
"Let there be no mistake; our hard won sovereignty now depends on our having the wisdom and courage to take the necessary decision which will secure the financial stability of our State," he said.
The other major theme of the Taoiseach's speech was the Northern peace process and the threat posed by what he described as the "evil murderers" of the splinter republican paramilitary groups.
"There remain a tiny minority who remain deaf to the will of the Irish people and blind to the unalterable peaceful path of our history.
"These people are sometimes called dissident republicans but they are no such thing. They are evil murderers whose actions and objectives could not be further removed from the republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity."
He said that that evil was demonstrated earlier this year with the murders of a police officer and two soldiers, and further displays of violence in the past week.
