Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

With regard to the identification of savings or expenditure adjustments that would help to assist the process, the recommendations of course would form part of the discussion. Where we can find agreement on the implementation, it is all the better for us. The Government has decisions to take and wants to do this on the basis of the greatest measure of agreement - full agreement if possible. It wants agreement not just on the pay issue because social partnership can provide an opportunity for agreement on other issues also. However, the issue I was talking about today related to public sector pay and what we seek to achieve in that area. Discussions are ongoing and they involve considering and costing all options and seeing what might form the basis of a solution. These discussions are on a without prejudice basis.

The negotiators and people discussing the issues should be accorded the time and space to enable them to get on with the task of seeing whether it is possible to find an agreed way forward that will provide us with the necessary savings on the basis of maintaining public services as best we can while meeting the financial targets.

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