Credibility of Croke Park deal in doubt if more savings not found

THE Croke Park agreement was supposed to help reduce our enormous level of debt by thousands of small cuts.

So far its pace has frustrated successive governments and its credibility is in danger if it does not start delivering what was expected.

The problem is that in exchange for a halt on pay cuts and forced redundancies, the trade unions negotiated a deal which is opaque in its language, vague in its commitments and absent in terms of specific savings.