The Government has told trade unions that it wants to continue to reduce the number of people employed in the public service.
However at talks today, Government officials did not set out the level of reduction that will be sought in the coming years.
Speaking after talks at Government Buildings, the general secretary of Impact Peter McLoone said the Government had indicated its intention to reduce public sector numbers but "did not go into the level of detail that we would have wanted."
He said the Government had indicated that it wanted to continue with the moratorium on recruitment in the public sector introduced several months ago.
A Government spokesman said that officials had a general discussion with unions about the public sector but that no figures had been given.
Talks have now adjourned until tomorrow afternoon when they will examine payroll figures for various sectors within the public service including health, education, local authorities and the civil service.
Earlier today a second public sector trade union leader indicated that numbers on the State payroll may have to be cut as part of a solution to dealing with the problems of the public finances.
Arriving for talks on the public sector pay bill this afternoon, Blair Horan of the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) said that in his view some reductions in numbers were "inevitable."
He said the critical thing for him was that there would be no cuts in pay for relatively low-paid staff.
Mr Horan argued that tax rises would have to form part of any overall plan to deal with the State's financial difficulties. He said that no solution to the current economic crisis would be possible without addressing issues around taxation, particularly for high earners.
Mr Horan said he simply could not countenance a situation where it was proposed to cut the pay of a frontline worker on €25,000 per year when someone earning over €100,000 or more would not have to pay additional tax.
"This situation would be morally untenable," he said.
He added that his members would not accept further pay cuts.
Earlier today Impact general secretary Peter McLoone admitted that any alternative plan agreed between unions and the Government to achieve savings would not be “painless".
Speaking on his way into talks Mr McLoone also said the possibility still exists that savings of €1.3 billion sought by the Government can be achieved without wage cuts.
In the absence of any deal public services, including schools and the health sector, are likely to be hit by strikes on November 24th.
"I don't know whether it is going to be possible to reach an accommodation with the Government at the moment," Mr McCloone told RTÉ's News At One.
He said his union would explore with the Government alternatives to achieving reductions in payroll costs which would allow both sides to avoid further cuts in pay, in pensions or the imposition of compulsory redundancies.
Mr McLoone warned that his union’s members had voted to defend “what is left in their wages”.
At this stage, he said the union appeared to be on a collision course with a Government that was “determined to pursue a single-item agenda to reduce pay”.
Asked if he thought it was possible to find the €1.3 billion being sought by Government without having pay cuts, Mr McLoone said he believed this was possible if all sectors engaged with the challenge “to see if we can maintain services at the same level while reducing costs”.
But he warned that cutting pay would not solve the problem in the public sector as it would only bring unions and Government into conflict, and "that would not help to transform public services".
Last night it emerged that Mr McLoone had warned officials in his union that any deal to avoid public sector pay cuts is likely to involve reductions in the number of people employed in the public sector from 2011.
In a private and confidential letter sent to Impact industrial relations staff in recent days Mr McLoone said: “In my judgment the alternative [to pay cuts] is likely to involve a significant reduction in public service numbers over the next three to four years, with the likelihood that some additional exceptional measures will also be needed in 2010 to deal with the budgetary crisis next year.”