Cowen demands more public pay cuts

THE Government has demanded that public sector workers bear more pain to achieve the savings necessary in next week’s budget as new figures showed the Exchequer deficit has mushroomed to €22 billion.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan adopted a hard-line approach with the unions, insisting proposals to save roughly €800 million through unpaid leave did not go far enough.

Instead, they reiterated that their original target of shaving €1.3bn from the public sector pay bill would have to be met, as the Exchequer figures illustrated the scale of the problem the Government is facing.