‘Keep Water Public’ campaign seeks referendum date Fósa is one of the unions that has formed the coalition behind the ‘Keep Water Public’ campaign. Launched at the end of October, the campaign calls on the Government to confirm a date for a constitutional referendum on the public ownership of water services. The campaign is supported by Fórsa, SIPTU, Unite, Connect and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Speaking at the campaign launch, ICTU president and Fórsa general secretary, Kevin Callinan, said the campaign to name the date for a referendum represented a shared commitment by trade unions to ensure the future of […]

At today’s Irish Congress of Trade Unions Executive committee meeting, Owen Reidy, the outgoing Assistant General Secretary was ratified as the new General Secretary of the Congress following Patricia King, after she stepped down from the post this month. Mr.Reidy, a father of 2 and a native of Donegal has 24 years of full-time experience in the Irish trade union movement. He started his career as a union official in SIPTU in the west of Ireland and occupied a range of roles in the union representing and organising workers in the aviation, insurance, and finance, non-commercial semi-states, and cleaning and […]

From the well-known blog : Notesonthefront.blog Ireland’s High Living Costs We all know that Ireland has a high level of living costs – second highest in the EU.  Irish prices (living costs) are 40 percent above the EU average.  However, comparison with the EU average can be misleading.  High-income countries invariably have higher living costs.  In the graph above all countries in our peer group exceed the EU average.    So the better comparison is with other high-income countries and not the EU base-line.  Nonetheless, bar Denmark, we are well above price levels in those countries – even high-cost Sweden. While there […]