Delayed partnership pay talks set to begin

NATIONAL pay talks are finally set to kick off in earnest this week — more than six months after they were first scheduled to start.

Talks were originally scheduled to begin last November in order to have a new social partnership deal in place before the current agreement — Sustaining Progress — expired at the end of last year. However, the onset of the Irish Ferries scandal, in which the company sought to displace Irish workers with cheaper agency crews from abroad, sparked the largest partnership crisis in almost 20 years of agreements.

The Irish Ferries dispute saw the largest trade union marches in recent history as SIPTU and then the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) voted to withdraw from talks. Finally, after months of intense negotiations, the Government’s top industrial relations troubleshooting body, the National Implementation Body, brokered a deal allowing social partnership talks to recommence.