Decentralisation - Pay talks must not be clouded

WITH the planned resumption of the national pay talks on Sunday, the objective has to be to secure a deal equitable to all parties relating to the direct issues affecting all of the partners and who they represent.

The question of decentralisation is not a direct issue, and by no stretch of the imagination impinges on anything but a fraction — 10,000 — of the country’s trade-union members.

It is an extraneous matter, undoubtedly a vexatious and very contentious one, and the approach adopted by delegates at the biennial conference of IMPACT is sensible.

They want the Government to reconsider its current proposal on decentralisation, as well as instructing their negotiators to consider its removal from public bodies, State agencies and other organisations where the majority of staff are opposed to it.

No doubt they will convey that attitude to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern when he attends the conference today, and to the junior minister with responsibility for decentralisation, Tom Parlon, on Tuesday next, although both men are already well aware of it.

Despite the fact that IMPACT’s general secretary Peter McLoone is currently president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), and his own union has been against the decentralisation process, it was Jack O’Connor of SIPTU who linked it to the pay talks as a central issue.

It is a distraction to one of the main factors, that of pay, and should be resolved separately and at a totally different level.