Higher taxes to fund better public services were called for yesterday by the leader of the State's biggest public sector union.
Impact general secretary Mr Peter McLoone said the union needed to "put down a challenge" to citizens, voters, business and workers on the issue of taxation.
Ireland used to have a high-tax economy, but had moved rapidly away from this, and now had one of the lowest rates of business and personal taxation in Europe, he told the union's biennial conference in Tralee, Co Kerry.
Impact would continue to demand a fairer and more equitable tax system, he said. "It's not right that people on average wages should pay tax at the high rate, or that those on the minimum wage should pay tax at all.
"But the link between public services, infrastructure and taxation has become disconnected in people's minds, and this union must be at the forefront in reconnecting them."
Irish people, he said, supported public services and abhorred the kind of shortcomings in the area of intellectual disability, as highlighted on a recent Prime Time programme on RTÉ.
"But many of the shortcomings exist because we are a low-tax society. We need to reforge the link between services and taxation in people's minds because the price of consistently low taxes, over long periods of time, will be poorer public services and inadequate infrastructure."
Mr McLoone was speaking during a debate on the continued participation of Impact in the partnership process. Delegates overwhelmingly backed a motion stating the partnership model had been "greatly beneficial", rejecting a counter-motion calling for a special delegate conference to debate the merits of national agreements.
However, Mr McLoone said he believed the two most recent partnership deals, Sustaining Progress and the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, had moved on to the "wrong trajectory" and had failed to take a sufficiently long-term, strategic view.
In hindsight, he believed the decision to deal with pay on an 18-month basis in Sustaining Progress was a retrograde step. It had created a "short-termism that has prevented us from developing a consistent long-term strategy to tackle the big problems in society".
As vice-president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and chairman of its public services committee, Mr McLoone will be a key union negotiator in talks on a national pay deal to cover the second 18 months of the three-year Sustaining Progress deal.
He said he expected the pay talks to begin next week, and to take "no more than a few weeks". While he was confident of a positive outcome, he had never experienced a time when nerves were so fragile and positions "so wobbly" on the union side.
This was because of uncertainty about the future for workers in Aer Rianta and CIÉ, as well as the stance adopted towards its workers by Independent Newspapers, which has threatened to sack staff if it fails to achieve a target of 205 voluntary redundancies.
Delegates passed a motion stating that unions should seek basic pay increases which at least matched projected inflation. Mr McLoone said public sector unions would also seek a commitment from the Government that a new benchmarking process would be put in place next year.
