The Irish Congress of Trade Unions' executive has accepted that this week's pay review and the tax cuts in the Budget are enough to save the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
However, the voluntary and community sector may withdraw from the PPF because of disappointment at the failure of the Budget to give more to the poor.
Yesterday Ms Orla O'Connor of the National Women's Council of Ireland said the voluntary and community sector, which makes up the "fourth pillar" of the PPF, felt "betrayed and abused" by the Budget.
"What we said in the consultations under the review of the PPF was not heard," she said.
The eight main organisations which form the pillar are to meet again in January to decide whether to remain in the social partnership process after consulting their members.
They are the NWCI, the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, the Conference of Religious in Ireland, Protestant Aid, the Community Platform, the ICTU Network of Unemployed Centres and the National Youth Council of Ireland.
The main grievances are that basic social welfare increases were £8 a week instead of £14, that child benefit increases were inadequate to meet child welfare and childcare costs, that tax cuts were given to high earners while people on the national minimum wage were left in the tax net and that more progress was not made in talks on social-inclusion measures.
Meanwhile, the ICTU executive endorsed the PPF pay review and Budget measures by 22 votes to three yesterday. The general secretary of ICTU, Mr Peter Cassells, warned that unions intend making improved childcare provision and better profit- and gain-sharing agreements priorities during the life of the PPF.
Improvements in methods of negotiating workplace change and the creation of a proper national training fund would also be important to the unions.
"Partnership is still operating very much at a national level. It hasn't deepened sufficiently at workplace level," Mr Cassells said.