Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Rabbitte for his support. In reducing taxes and, in particular, helping those on lower incomes, we have followed our programme for Government very faithfully. It is incorrect to say that the benchmarking process will fall through if the new social contract falls through. I said that the benchmarking process for next year has already commenced. A preliminary report on it has already been produced. If the agreement falls through, obviously, the terms of the agreement would be subject to entirely new negotiations between the Government as employers and the Civil Service and public sector unions. Work on benchmarking would continue but the ability of the Government to secure an agreement on it and suggest satisfactory conditions would depend on the type of agreement we would end up with on the public sector side.

We are satisfied with the agreement in the draft programme and are satisfied to continue with the benchmarking process, to negotiate to discover what we can and cannot do following receipt of the final report and based on its contents, and to negotiate with the public service unions on how benchmarking pay awards can be paid, whether all of them can be paid and the way in which they can be phased or scaled. This is the agreement as of now, but if we entered an entirely new set of negotiations with the Civil Service unions, it would depend on the resources available to pay awards. We cannot answer this question at the moment because we have had no discussions on this issue with the public service unions on their own. I hope this will not arise but if it does, what I said on Sunday will apply.

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