Who are the Social Partners and how do we identify these specific individuals.

Social Partnership Agreements

The Department of the Taoiseach is responsible for the overall negotiations and implementation of the Social Partnership Agreements, of which there have been seven to date including the current agreement:

• Towards 2016, Ten-Year Framework Social Partnership Agreement 2006-2015

Each of the seven Social Partnership Agreements - which are focused principally on incomes, fiscal, social, economic and competitiveness policies – have been negotiated between the Government and the social partners. The latter are organised into four pillars as follows:

• Trade Union Pillar
• Business and Employer Pillar
• Farming Pillar
• Community and Voluntary Pillar (included for first time in negotiations on Partnership 2000)

The negotiations on each of the Social Partnership Agreements were preceded by the production of Frameworks agreed under the auspices of the:
National Economic and Social Council (NESC)
Implementation of the Agreements is achieved primarily through the production of Quarterly Progress Reports.
Contact:

Social Partnership - socialpartnership@taoiseach.gov.ie

OUR overpaid bureaucrats have let us down again. The EU is bankrolling our budget deficit of €18bn a year, so that pay in the public sector can be twice what it should be. Jorg Asmussen, who's on the executive board of the ECB, said that pay in the Irish public sector rose by 90 per cent in the 10 years to 2010. This happened nowhere else in Europe, bar Greece.

It’s the Economy, Dummkopf!


With Greece and Ireland in economic shreds, while Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even Italy head south, only one nation can save Europe from financial Armageddon: a highly reluctant Germany. The ironies—like the fact that bankers from Düsseldorf were the ultimate patsies in Wall Street’s con game—pile up quickly as Michael Lewis investigates German attitudes toward money, excrement, and the country’s Nazi past, all of which help explain its peculiar new status.


By Michael LewisPhotograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson

WURST-CASE SCENARIO German deputy finance minister Jörg Asmussen, at a vestige of the Berlin Wall.


http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/09/europe-201109

Debt cut prospect played down

Jorg Asmussen told a think tank audience in Dublin that by 2007 the Irish economy had become 'unfit and overweight'. Photograph: Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0413/breaking10.html







One of the most senior members of the European Central Bank yesterday laid much of the blame for Ireland’s economic difficulties on domestic factors and played down the prospects of an easing of the State’s debt burden.
Jörg Asmussen – one of six members of the ECB’s executive board – bluntly told a think tank audience in Dublin that by 2007 the Irish economy had become “unfit and overweight”.
Excessive pay increases in the public and private sectors, poor supervision of banks and overspending by governments had all contributed to weakening the economy, he said.

GreenLady wrote: »

but only if it elects men and women, not lap dogs

Belfast wrote: »

No.
There are a lot more special interest groups that just the trade unions.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has rejected reports that details of next month's Budget, including a planned hike in the VAT rate, were shown to German officials yesterday.
Mr Kenny met chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin yesterday after which reports emerged that the Irish Government was planning raise the top rate of VAT by 2 per cent to 23 per cent.
According to documents presented to a Bundestag budget committee, the measure would generate an additional €670 million for the Government.
Opposition parties rounded on the Government today accusing it a "staggering breach of faith", with suggestions that the German chancellor was now "pulling the strings".
Asked how the document ended up in the Bundestag, Mr Kenny said: “I have no idea.”
Reuters news agency reported seeing a document presented to the German parliament’s budget committee yesterday which showed Irish budget plans, including a 2 per cent increase in the top VAT rate to 23 per cent to generate €670 million.
It is understood papers were dated November 2011 but not signed by the Minister for Finane Michael Noonan.
Mr Kenny, at his first official meeting with Northern Ireland‘s First and Deputy First ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness in Belfast, could not explain how or why the lower house of the German parliament was examining Ireland's budget options.
“Let me confirm something to you, the Cabinet have made no decision in regard to the Budget. It is on December 6th,” he said.


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1117/breaking50.html