Resolving disputes - A lot to play for in the coming days

It must mean something significant, something both worrying and worthwhile, that it has taken five years since our economy collapsed before the gap between government spending and income manifested itself in potentially chaotic public sector/semi-state industrial action.

How the dispute at Bus Éireann and the far greater impasse around Croke Park II will be resolved — and they will be no matter how long it takes — will say even more about our capacity to protect the ideas of social equity and fairness despite the parameters of the times we live in.

Nevertheless, no matter how you twist it, no matter how strongly you might wish it to be otherwise, we cannot afford the public sector pay and pensions bill as it stands. That applies too to semi-state companies more or less permanently dependent, even if for very valid social reasons, on government support. The Government is, like so many middle or lower paid workers, already obliged to make ends meet with reduced incomes, in an unenviable and almost untenable position. Despite that, or because of that, it is increasingly difficult to support or even understand the decision not to ask more of those individuals earning over, say, €100,000, even if only for a specific period. A new rate of tax pitched at higher-level earners won’t make any great difference to the bottom line but it would do something far, far more important — it would show a commitment to fairness and decency that could be a very positive force in resolving the difficulties around Croke Park II and the Bus Éireann dispute.