Unions and Government set out positions at WRC public pay talks

Unions and the Government have been setting out their positions this afternoon, on the first day of public pay talks at the WRC.

25 worker groups representing 300,000 state employees have started negotiations with a two week deadline for agreement.

Bernard Harbor, Head of Communications at the IMPACT trade union, believes a deal can be done.

"It's not a Cinderella moment if we get to midnight on June 2 and we haven't finished the work.

"There are time constraints, in particular the Government's side I understand wants to have things in place so it can do the budgetary sums, on the union side we have to conduct ballots over the summer," he said.