Unions to hear public pay cuts still on table

GOVERNMENT officials will today tell unions that public sector pay cuts are still on the cards unless viable ways of saving the Exchequer €2bn are arrived at urgently.

Last night Justice Minister Dermot Ahern refused to rule out the possibility of cutting public service pay, despite the unions’ vehement opposition to such a move.

Speaking on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics, he said: “Everything is on the table — that is the reality. When you go to a situation where we were ruinning the country for €60 billion and having tax to do that and now we are in a situation of [having only] €40 billion, we have to cut... we have one of the lowest tax wedges in the OECD. That can’t continue in times of recession.”