ORGANISED LABOUR

(Owen Reidy, General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions)

THE rules have changed; it is now clear that pub­lic spend­ing is based on noise rather than need  (Irish Mail on Sunday, 19.4.2026).

The past two weeks have felt seis­mic.  With a 20% jump in fuel prices as a result of conflict in the Middle East, Ire­land’s roads and refiner­ies were blocked by farmers seeking financial assistance.  

The Gov­ern­ment was caught on the hop, as its response showed.  On Fri­day, it threatened to send in the army;  by Sunday it was announ­cing a €500 million tax cut!

It was a remark­able capit­u­la­tion, but it also demon­strated clearly that, even in the con­text of a cost-of-liv­ing crisis for so many people, the Gov­ern­ment will cave in to loud voices, whether the case is strong or weak.

We can see now that this is a clear theme with the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment.  Last year’s budget cut the VAT rate for hos­pit­al­ity busi­nesses.  All avail­able evid­ence showed the sec­tor was doing well, but loud demands won it a tax cut worth €750 million, to the greatest bene­fit of the biggest com­pan­ies.

Add this week’s fuel tax cut and, in the space of a year, the Gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted almost €1.5billion to what are effect­ively sec­toral giveaways.  Does any­one ser­i­ously believe either of those tax cuts will be passed on to cus­tom­ers or to the work­ers in those sectors?

There are two lines of defence that the Gov­ern­ment has taken about its response to the cost-of-liv­ing crisis.  The first is that this is the largest pack­age of meas­ures adop­ted by any European coun­try.  The second is that it can­not pro­tect every­one from every cost pres­sure.

These two argu­ments explain so much of the pub­lic’s frus­tra­tion.  The Cor­por­a­tion Tax boom has given Ire­land more money than ever—yet there’s no coher­ence to how it’s being spent, or who it’s being spent for.  Bil­lions are going out the door, but not in ways that mean­ing­fully pro­tect work­ers and their fam­il­ies.

No one expects the Gov­ern­ment to shield every­one from every cost pres­sure.  But, when such enorm­ous sums are being deployed, people reas­on­ably expect the State to help as many people as pos­sible, as much as pos­sible.  Instead, vast pub­lic money is flow­ing to nar­row corners of the eco­nomy.

And work­ers feel it. With infla­tion up 20% over five years, pay pack­ets are stretched to break­ing point.  What makes it worse is that the Gov­ern­ment treats inac­tion as a vir­tue, and is act­ively res­ist­ing the very meas­ures we know work.  It delayed the introduction of a liv­ing wage for three years, and it stopped the planned roll-out of stat­utory Sick Pay alto­gether— abandon­ing the lowest-­paid work­ers in the coun­try at the very moment the cost of liv­ing was hit­ting them hard­est!

And, in the 2025 Budget, it quietly let infla­tion raise income taxes by stealth!

These were not dif­fi­cult cuts forced on a strug­gling exchequer.  They were act­ive choices, made by a Gov­ern­ment with record resources, that decided work­ers could wait while busi­nesses could not.

This can­not con­tinue.

Uni­ons will reflect this new real­ity in pay nego­ti­ations across the eco­nomy over the com­ing year.  We know that pay is the best response to the cost of liv­ing, and we will not be found want­ing when it comes to defend­ing our mem­bers’ liv­ing stand­ards.

Work­ers are often told that now is not the time to talk about pay increases, that we need to wait.  Yet increases in the cost of rent, bills and gro­cer­ies haven’t waited.

All of this will be taken into account in pay nego­ti­ations across the eco­nomy over the next year.

As for the Gov­ern­ment, it is clear that it must show some vis­ion and pur­pose in respond­ing to the cost-of-liv­ing crisis.

There are meas­ures it can take to sup­port, not just cer­tain indus­tries or sec­tors, but also those who are strug­gling, and the squeezed middle.

It could reduce the cost of pub­lic ser­vices, such as pub­lic trans­port, whether tem­por­ar­ily or per­man­ently.  

It could com­mit to double index­a­tion of income tax bands as part of Budget 2027. 

It could drop the VAT cut for hos­pit­al­ity and, for the same price, cut VAT across the board by one per cent.

All of these can be done while the Gov­ern­ment shifts the eco­nomy onto a firmer foot­ing, so that Ire­land is less exposed to the whims of Don­ald Trump and events in the Middle East.

That means invest­ing in Irish industry so we’re less reli­ant on For­eign Dir­ect Invest­ment and Cor­por­a­tion tax, and mov­ing away from a reli­ance on for­eign oil and gas and towards our own renew­able energy!

The Gov­ern­ment is not respons­ible for global infla­tion.  It is respons­ible for the choices it makes in response to it.  Right now, it is choos­ing to reward dis­rup­tion over need, to treat fiscal restraint as a prin­ciple that applies only when work­ers ask for something, and to gov­ern in the interests of those who shout the loudest rather than those hurt­ing the most (Irish Mail on Sunday, 19.4.2026).

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Fuel Protest May Have Left

Unions Feeling Upstaged!

IT’S AMAZING what a con­voy of tract­ors and trucks on O’Con­nell Street can do!  At least, that’s what many Union lead­ers must have been think­ing after the recent fuel block­ades! 

A group of rel­at­ively unknown pro­test­ers got such swift and size­able res­ults that they were surely the envy of any Union offi­cial locked in talks for months with little to show for it (The Herald, Dublin,20.5.2026).

The pro­test­ers’ suc­cess may have left them feel­ing, not just upstaged, but facing more intense scru­tiny about what they are deliv­er­ing for mem­bers as pay expect­a­tions are mount­ing.

Uni­ons and the Gov­ern­ment appear more at log­ger­heads now than at any time since the reces­sion.

Not long after the fuel pro­test­ers emerged with a massive half-a-bil­lion Euro pack­age, the leader of the Irish Con­gress of Trade Uni­ons (ICTU), Owen Reidy, was keen to shift the spot­light to the 800,000 work­ers rep­res­en­ted by Uni­ons in his organ­isa­tion.

Block­ades, bar­ri­cades and those who “shout the loudest” had been rewar­ded, he said.

He warned that the Gov­ern­ment’s fuel industry pack­age will be factored into pay talks across all sec­tors over the next year.

“A gov­ern­ment that can find €500m for one industry at the drop of a hat has no cred­ible case to make for restraint at the pay talks table”, he said.

He pointed out that the Gov­ern­ment had set a clear pre­ced­ent:  “Work­ers will remem­ber it”, he added.

The theme of this year’s May Day march was “Can you afford to live?

ICTU high­lighted start­ling facts from the Nevin Eco­nomic Research Insti­tute about liv­ing in Ire­land:  Rents have jumped by almost 158% in a dec­ade. And a stag­ger­ing 42% of young adults are fin­an­cially depend­ent on, or liv­ing with, their par­ents.

Pub­lic sec­tor Union lead­ers are under par­tic­u­lar pres­sure, as they are about to begin a pay battle with the Gov­ern­ment.  The cur­rent Wage Agree­ment runs out in six weeks’ time.

It is hardly sur­pris­ing that there was a lot of fight­ing talk when the Con­fer­ence sea­son got into full swing!  In the back­ground, ambu­lance work­ers were plan­ning pick­ets.

Kevin Cal­l­inan, Gen­eral Sec­ret­ary of Fórsa and one of the main nego­ti­at­ors at the upcom­ing talks, focused on a poten­tial indus­trial rela­tions free-for-all that would exist without a Gov­ern­ment deal.  Without agree­ment, we would enter a new era, he said.  Con­flict would be inev­it­able.

Motions tabled at Con­fer­ences held by Fórsa, the Irish Nurses and Mid­wives Organ­isa­tion (INMO), and the Com­mu­nic­a­tions Work­ers’ Union raised the pro­spect of indus­trial action.

Another mem­ber of the nego­ti­at­ing team, INMO Gen­eral Sec­ret­ary Phil Ní Sheaghdha, said “sig­ni­fic­ant” pay rises will be sought at the talks.

Del­eg­ates at the Asso­ci­ation of Higher Civil and Pub­lic Ser­vants’ Con­fer­ence urged nego­ti­at­ors to ensure pay levels that reflect their respons­ib­il­it­ies and account­ab­il­ity.

Pub­lic health nurses deman­ded an imme­di­ate Gov­ern­ment response to the fuel crisis.

Del­eg­ates backed an emer­gency motion seek­ing higher mileage rates at the INMO con­fer­ence.

A series of speak­ers claimed they were sub­sid­ising the HSE when using their own cars to visit moth­ers and babies, or the eld­erly.

There was a sim­ilar emer­gency motion on the Fórsa sched­ule.  Tabled by the Courts Ser­vice Exec­ut­ive and Cler­ical Branch Com­mit­tee, it noted that civil ser­vice travel and sub­sist­ence mileage rates are a bench­mark for pay­ments across the pub­lic ser­vice.

It added that the cur­rent sys­tem for review­ing rates does not respond quickly enough to costs.  The motion called on the National Exec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee to seek urgent talks with the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Expendit­ure to con­sider an “interim adjust­ment” to rates, along with a trans­par­ent method to review them reg­u­larly.

Even before the fuel protests, Mr. Cal­l­inan had emphas­ised that work­ers had not fared well in the last budget because of a lack of income-tax index­a­tion.  

He prom­ised that nego­ti­at­ors would aim to make up lost ground, as the aver­age house­hold has lost 2% of dis­pos­able income.

The fal­lout from infla­tion was the centrepiece of his open­ing speech at his Union’s bien­nial con­fer­ence in Kil­lar­ney, Co Kerry:

“A lot can hap­pen in a split second…  That tiny pause, before you tap your bank card.  At the super­mar­ket, at the pet­rol pump, at the cof­fee counter, on the way to work.  That split second where you do the maths in your head.  ‘Can I afford this?’ Ordin­ary things… that no longer feel ordin­ary”.

Address­ing the Con­fer­ence, Taoiseach Micheál Mar­tin acknow­ledged there were cost-of-liv­ing pres­sures.  He said the gov­ern­ment was “up for” the pub­lic sec­tor talks to begin and gave assur­ances that could be expec­ted to ease the path to the nego­ti­at­ing table.

Mr. Mar­tin said he had told all Min­is­ters that he wants rapid pro­gress on pub­lic ser­vants’ out­stand­ing claims under the cur­rent deal.  He also prom­ised that a Bill to repeal FEMPI (Fin­an­cial Emer­gency Meas­ures in the Pub­lic Interest) legis­la­tion, that was pre­vi­ously used to cut pay, would be pri­or­it­ised this sum­mer. 

Mr Cal­l­inan did not appear that impressed:

“I think the Taoiseach said a lot of pos­it­ive things, but the test will be can we bring them to the bank?” (The Herald, Dublin.20.5.2026).

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