Partnership over

Both unions and employers have indicated that the social partnership deals, which fixed pay and regulated a range of other issues between 1987 and 2009, have gone and will not return in the near future. The last deal collapsed in 2009.

Larry Murrin, president of the Irish employers’ association IBEC, said that “social partnership has had its time” and he expected future pay would be determined on a much more decentralised basis.

David Begg, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, agreed that there was little prospect of a renewal. However, he warned that wage demands were building up.