Partnership deals good for civil servants only

YOUR editorial (Irish Examiner, September 6) touched on some of the glaring inequities of the social partnership model in the Irish economy.

While these deals have been promoted as delivering stable economic development over the last 10 years, in the main they have mostly benefited permanent public sector employees rather than the private sector workers whose firms have actually generated the growth.

Undoubtedly, the early agreements assisted the average private sector PAYE worker through lower tax rates but more recent ones have almost exclusively favoured the sinecured, pensionable staff of state and semi-state bodies.