Hints on public pay cuts - All for one, one for all

Two senior government figures — Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin and junior minister Simon Harris — have suggested it may be possible, in the not-too-distant future, to consider reversing some pay and pension cuts, as well as new pension contributions imposed on public- sector workers in recent years.

They also opened a discussion about a return to collective bargaining, the process that served one set of workers far better than it did another.

Suggestions like this — nudge-nudge, we’ll-look-after-you reassurances — can be expected as the Government enters its autumn months. Nevertheless, it might not have been expecting too much to hope that our leaders had learnt the lessons of the past decade and that such divisive inequities had been finally consigned to history. Seemingly not.

They should, however, tread very carefully. Unless these buy-a-vote measures are matched by similar reversals in the private sector, say a refund of the levy imposed on private pension schemes or any other equally unlikely innovation, then the stoicism that got this society through the last few very difficult years might come to a shuddering end. Any measures to reverse the essential cost savings of recent years cannot be considered unless everyone in society benefits. It is though important to show that there may be an end to our difficulties in sight but to confine this celebation to just one sector of society would be utterly unacceptable.