The possibility of a new public sector pay deal being struck quickly remains a possibility, union leader Kevin Callinan said on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Callinan, who is F\u00f3rsa<\/a> general secretary, was speaking after union and Government<\/a> representatives met for the first time for talks proper at the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC).<\/p>\n He indicated before the talks got under way he felt there was the possibility of a deal being struck in days rather than weeks.<\/p>\n After six hours of talks on Monday, he said: \u201cI think one of the positives out of today was both sides are committed to try and do this as quickly as possible. <\/p>\n \u201cThe urgency does seem to be shared, so I think that is a positive. So we definitely welcome that.\u201d<\/p>\n The opening session, he said, had been mainly about the two sides providing an \u201copening outline of positions\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went through in some detail our priorities in relation to pay, the various aspects of it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had a good discussion with the WRC\u2019s facilitators, and we\u2019ve given them some things to think about overnight.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, we\u2019re going to start with pay, but there are other things to be discussed as well, from both our perspective and theirs. We\u2019re back in at 10.30am, so we\u2019ll see tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if the unions had received any feedback from the Government side in relation to their opening positions, he said they had not, but suggested they would \u201cget a sense of that tomorrow\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe mainly laid out the issues and backed them up with a lot of detail today,\u201d he said. \u201cI think they listened to that and now do have a number of things to reflect on.\u201d<\/p>\n Callinan was accompanied to the talks by Phil N\u00ed Sheaghdha<\/a> of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation<\/a>, John Boyne of the Irish National Teachers\u2019 Organisation<\/a> and Adrian Kane of Siptu<\/a>.<\/p>\n He was earlier asked about the Taoiseach\u2019s suggestion that any deal would have to have productivity elements that provided taxpayers with value for money. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Any pay deal reached with unions must have productivity elements, says TaoiseachOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n