€300m worth of cuts lost as strike called off

THE deferment of tomorrow’s strike may have cost the Government €300 million, as the €1.3 billion it was looking to cut from the public sector pay bill appears to have been reduced to €1bn.

IMPACT general secretary Peter McLoone announced yesterday after two days of continuous negotiations that the Government and unions had reached an accommodation on 12 days of unpaid leave across the public sector, negating the need for pay cuts and, therefore, the strike.

There are a number of areas which have not been fully examined, in particular in terms of the transformation of the public service into the future.