Today the Government meets the other social partners to begin talks on a successor to Partnership 2000.
The hope is that the talks can be concluded by early in the new year, so that the negotiators can produce a document for ratification by their respective constituencies well before the pay terms of the current agreement begin to run out in March.
At the special delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions last Thursday, where it was decided to enter talks, several delegates warned that they did not want to be rushed into a hasty vote. They also made it clear that they felt they had settled for far too little the last time.
ail rises in December if we are to be persuaded that there is any point to a new partnership agreement".
MSF national secretary Mr Jerry Shanahan was the only trade union leader to put a figure on the next pay claim. He said it should be 26 per cent over three years
The social wage - housing, health, education and public transport infrastructure - featured prominently in the debate and it was more than just rhetoric. The debate mirrored the new awareness of the need to manage economic success effectively.
That is why employers, who believe pay remains the central issue, may find it will take a while to reach agreement. Not only the unions, but leading players in the "social pillar", such as the Conference of Religious in Ireland and the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, will want the issue of the social wage addressed early on.
Mr Peter Cassells, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, accepts that it may take time to make some employers realise that the agenda has "moved on".
"It's not just about sustaining competitiveness any longer, but how you share out the benefits that competitiveness brings," he said.
With the Budget less than four weeks away, taxation will inevitably be the first item on the agenda. The remarks by the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, on RTE's This Week programme promising that the "biggest tax breaks ever" will be on offer have not gone down well with the unions.
Mr Cassells said yesterday he was "very disappointed" that the Tanaiste should still be talking about slashing taxes rather than tax reform: "You can't have tax reductions for everybody."
If the Government went down the road suggested, he said, "all our good friends with the Ansbacher accounts could benefit." If this was "payback time" it should only be for those who complied with the tax laws during the lean years, especially the low-paid.
He believes that the Government will be receptive to the need to make spending on social wage items a priority, if only because last week's Irish Times/MRBI poll had identified these as the priorities of most voters.
Employers do still see a combination of moderate pay increases and tax cuts as the way to reward effort and maintain competitiveness. The director-general of the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation, Mr John Dunne, said yesterday: "The real issue here is not to focus on pay in employment but rather after-tax pay."
He described some of the high double-digit figures for pay increases being floated by trade unionists as "strictly for the birds". Employers wanted to play on a pitch that allowed for certainty. There could be no central agreement on pay with an uncapped clause on local bargaining added on.
Mr Dunne felt that more flexibility could be shown over gainsharing. But this element of any deal would need to be made more attractive from a tax point of view.
So pay could not only end up being the last item to be agreed, but the one on which agreement will be hardest to achieve.