Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

We have had situations in the past where we have had no national agreement and others where we have had national agreements where occasionally employers pleaded inability to pay. We have never had a situation where we have had a national pay agreement which virtually nobody will pay. The Government will not pay it and IBEC says it will not pay it. It is a pay agreement which is now a fiction.

Does the Taoiseach have any plans to reconvene a meeting of the social partners to arrive at a real understanding or agreement on matters relating to pay, taxes, levies and all that goes with it? The average family does not know where they stand. The prospect of a pay increase is off the table. In many cases, jobs are at risk. The question of pay cuts is on the table in many areas, including, effectively, in the public service. Now the Taoiseach and all his Ministers are talking about the prospect of tax increases sometime later in the year. The average family has no idea what their personal and family budgets are for the year. It would be a good idea if the Taoiseach reconvened a meeting of the social partners to get some real understanding as to the situation on pay, given that what we have currently is a fiction. The Government has an agreement on paper, which, as everybody knows, will not be implemented. It will only succeed, ultimately, in bringing the whole theory of social partnership into disrepute.

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