Talks on a new national pay deal enter a make-or-break phase today when the parties return to Government Buildings for intensive discussions.
They intend to try to reach agreement over the next two days on pay rates to cover the remaining 18 months of the Sustaining Progress partnership programme. Some progress has been made on related issues, including redundancy payments.
Employers, unions and the Government have agreed in principle that the maximum wage applying to redundancy payments should be increased from the current €507 a week. A new upper limit has yet to be fixed.
Progress on other issues has been slow, however, and the gap on pay - the central issue of the talks - remains as wide as it has been from the outset.
At a four-hour meeting on Saturday, the parties devoted much of their attention to projected inflation rates for the next 18 months. Agreement on the likely inflation trend would be a first step towards working out appropriate wage levels for the duration of the deal.
Employers, however, are strongly resisting union demands for a special flat rate increase of about €20 a week for those on low pay.
This would ensure that workers receiving a little more than the minimum wage would get something more than whatever percentage increase is agreed in the talks.
Such flat-rate increases have been a feature of past pay agreements, but there was no such provision in the most recent pay deal at the beginning of last year.
Unions have made this demand a key issue of the talks and it has developed into a major sticking point.
Neither side, meanwhile, has shown its hand on the type of general increase it would be prepared to accept in a new agreement. Unions have indicated they will be seeking a repeat of the 7 per cent rise agreed for the first 18 months of Sustaining Progress.
The main employers' body, IBEC, says this is an unsustainable aspiration given that inflation is currently running at between 1 and 2 per cent.
It is anticipated that the chairman of the talks, Mr Dermot McCarthy, secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach, will today begin attempting to move the two sides from their respective positions. Even privately, union representatives say they could not recommend an increase of less than 6 per cent for the 18 months.
Sources at the talks, however, suggest that if a deal is to be done, it is likely to be around 5 per cent. Any figure below that, it is suggested, would not secure the required approval of union members, while it is considered unlikely that employers would contemplate a higher figure.
