Pay and pensions - A new deal must be fair for everyone

The briefest consideration of two events yesterday may not be the perfect way to illustrate how people in the same society exist in parallel universes, but it is better than most.

In one orbit we had Tom Geraghty, general secretary of the Public Service Executive Union, describe Transport Minister Leo Varadkar as “mad” because he said Croke Park II, if there is one, must include provisions for redundancies in the public sector.

In the other orbit, the one where unnerving uncertainty is the order of the day, AIB staff were told they faced a pay freeze until 2014 and the pensions 6,500 workers had funded will not materialise. The news from the bank, which is 99.8% owned by the State after a €20.7bn bailout, followed an earlier announcement that 2,500 jobs were to be cut. Staff were told the pensions they had funded and hoped for would not materialise as the bank will move all employees to defined-contribution schemes.