Budget cuts put 30,000 jobs at risk, claim unions

Cuts introduced in the budget could result in the loss of up to 30,000 jobs, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has estimated.

Trade union leaders yesterday accused the Government of taking the wrong options in Tuesday’s budget, while also questioning the true size of the €2.5bn adjustment claimed by Finance Minister Michael Noonan.

Assistant secretary general, Sally Anne Kinahan, said the Government could have adopted a different approach that would have been fairer and achieved greater economic growth.

“There were huge missed opportunities,” said Ms Kinahan who pointed out that €33.2bn had been extracted out of the economy as a result of budgetary measures introduced by successive governments since 2009.

“We have to be clear that they are still extracting €2.5bn from the economy over the next 12 months and implementing cuts that do not have to be made.”

Ictu expressed concern at the reduction in Jobseekers Allowance for young people, which it claimed was difficult to understand at a time when there were 30 applicants for every vacancy.

It described cuts in maternity benefit as “anti-women and anti-family.”

Congress also criticised the failure of the Government to address the impact of changes in the State pension age, which trade unions maintain will leave many people in a financial “no man’s land” upon retirement.

However, she said Ictu welcomed some budgetary measures including the establishment of a Strategic Investment Fund as well as the extension of the free GP services to all children aged under five years and the recruitment of extra gardaí, medical staff and teachers.

At an press conference in Dublin, the director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute, Tom Nealy, criticised the lack of transparent information about the latest budgetary figures.

Mr Nealy questioned whether the true adjustment in next year’s budget was €2.5bn as claimed by the Government, or €3.1bn as set by the troika. He claimed it was impossible to state which was the correct figures based on information from the Department of Finance.

Mr Nealy claimed it was “most unusual and unprecedented” that the department had failed to provide full year savings from the various cutbacks announced in the budget.

Mr Nealy said it seemed the Government was giving “different messages in different places to different groups” about the true size of the adjustment.

Criticising the budget, he called on the Government to provide evidence which showed that cuts in Jobseekers Allowance for young people would increase employment and not worsen poverty. He questioned how young people from rural areas who moved to urban centres seeking employment could survive on €100 per week after paying rent.