History of INOU in Social Partnership

Background:
Throughout much of the 1980s Ireland experienced severe economic recession which was characterised by spiralling unemployment, mass emigration and a huge national debt. In the mid 1980s a consensus emerged that the scale of the crisis was such that a new way of regulating relationships between the (then) Social Partners - Government, Employers and Trade Unions was required if Ireland was to overcome its economic problems. The first Social Partnership Agreement - the Programme for National Recovery focused primarily on wage moderation in return for lower levels of income tax, policies to stimulate employment and enhanced social protections. This 'Pact' was the first in a series of Social Partnership Agreements.

These agreements are:
The Programme for National Recovery (PNR, 1987 - 1990)
The Programme for Economic and Social Progress (PESP, 1991 - 1994)
The Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PCW, 1994 - 1996)
Partnership 2000 for Inclusion, Employment and Competitiveness (P2000, 1997 - 2000)
Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF, 2000 - 2003)
Sustaining Progress (SP, 2003 - 2005)
Towards 2016 (T16, 2006 - 2015)

Whilst commentators are divided on the value of Social Partnership, many view the process as being instrumental in transforming the Irish economy over the last 20 years.

INOU Involvement:

In 1993, the INOU passed a resolution at its Annual Delegates Conference to commit the organisation to seek an equal basis for participation in Social Partnership. The (then) current Agreement - the Programme for Competitiveness and Work was due to end in 1996 and the organisation undertook a major campaign to achieve negotiation status in any new agreement.
The INOU's publication in March 1996 of "If you think the economy is working... ask someone who isn't" set out the argument for INOU participation in this process, as well as the organisation's vision of social partnership. Further to its publication, intensive lobbying of TDs and Senators continued throughout the spring. In June of 1996 then Taoiseach, John Bruton, met with the INOU and agreed to further consider the issue of INOU participation. In October of 1996 the INOU and seven other Community and Voluntary organisations were invited by the Taoiseach to participate alongside the other Social Partners in the negotiation of a new programme. Partnership 2000 was the first Social Partnership Agreement to include the input of the newly established Community and Voluntary Pillar in drafting all elements of the agreement other than those concerning wage levels. This was a major achievement for the INOU as it was the first time anywhere in the world that an unemployed organisation had participated in the negotiations of a national partnership agreement.

Partnership 2000:
The terms of Partnership 2000 were critically accepted by a Special Delegate Conference of the INOU in January of 1997. Increases in Social Welfare, changes to Family Income Supplement and increases in the number of Jobs Initiatives places featured in the Agreement. While the agreement itself heralded major improvements and progressive measures in a social policy context, the same year's budget was seen to be a disappointment. With an increase of 40,000 people in employment in Ireland in 1997 the actual fall in unemployment, particularly as measured by the live register was much less dramatic.
With the setting up of the Tax Credit Working Group, the Autumn of 1998 saw Budget 1999 introduce a Tax Credit system along with an exemption of the first £100 of wages from the tax net. The INOU had been campaigning for such a system since 1990, especially as it provided a way for money available for tax cuts to be directly aimed at the lower paid.

Programme for Prosperity and Fairness:
In November of 1999 the negotiations for the successor agreement to Partnership 2000 began. It was evident from the start that no real substantiative negotiations would begin until after the publication of the 2000 Budget, a budget that would nearly derail the entire Partnership process. Budget 2000 failed to remove low income earners from the tax net or to provide any real mechanism to help families pay for childcare. The Budget also provided for low increases in Social Welfare payments.

The (then) An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, met each of the pillars separately in a bid to reaffirm the Government's commitment to negotiating a new national agreement which would include additional resources to secure a social inclusion package. The negotiations began in earnest in January of 2000 ultimately leading to a £1.5 billion social inclusion package, representing a tripling of social inclusion expenditure as compared to the previous agreement. This final section of negotiations was agreed to after a three-month process and became the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF), the fifth Social Partnership Agreement.
A new National Minimum Wage Act was introduced in 2000 which set the minimum wage at £4.40 per hour. Under the terms of PPF agreement the Benchmarking and Indexation Working Group was established in December of 2000 to examine the issues involved in developing a benchmark for adequacy of adult and child welfare payments. There was an acceptance by a majority on the Working Group that there should be a benchmark set for social welfare payments independently linked to increases in standards of living. The preferred position of most of those advocating this approach was that the lowest welfare rates should be benchmarked at 27% of Gross Average Industrial Earnings (GAIE) in the short-term and at 30% of GAIE in the medium term. February of 2001 saw the launch RAPID - Revitalising Areas by Planning, Investment and Development. Front loading of National Development Plan investment into 25 disadvantaged communities throughout the country would deliver tangible gains for areas ravaged by years of neglect. RAPID had been intensively lobbied for by the INOU and the Community and Voluntary Pillar during the PPF negotiations and this development was seen as a key win for this sector of the Social Partners.
Unfortunately, by the end of the PPF's time frame the Government had failed to meet many of its key commitments. The lowest social welfare payment did not reach the £100/€127 level as outlined agreement and set against a backdrop of increasing inflation and rising costs of living it was evident that less than had been hoped had been gained.

Sustaining Progress:
A new Partnership Agreement was proposed and in March of 2003 at an INOU Special Delegates Conference in Dublin, INOU affiliated organisations voted to critically accept the terms of the now sixth Agreement - Sustaining Progress. This Agreement sought to adopt a more strategic and problem solving approach to the issues facing the nation through the identification of ten Special Initiatives (SIs). Where as previous agreements had far more reference to specific deliverables, indicators and targets, the new Agreement brought with it new processes and mechanisms. Of utmost importance to the INOU were the SIs on the long-term unemployed, vulnerable workers, those who had been made redundant; tackling educational disadvantage, literacy, numeracy and early school leaving. Unfortunately, the Agreement lacked any clear specific actions and or resources to implement these Special Initiatives.
Budget 2004 gave rise to what became known as the Savage Sixteen Social Welfare cuts which saw the government introduce serious disincentives to unemployed people moving from welfare to work. In 2004 the mid-term review of 'Sustaining Progress', the first Agreement to feature such a review, had brought into sharp focus the detriment that had been caused by the budget cuts. The prolonged review was however timely, as the economic situation proved to be more favourable than at the time of negotiating the Agreement. Unemployment had been falling, inflation was low and tax revenues were running €1.5 billion ahead of projections. With this back drop of an improved fiscal position for the Government, Budget 2005 saw what at the time was the highest ever increase in the single social welfare payment of €14.00 per week. This increase put the Government back on track towards realising their own target of setting the lowest rate of social welfare at €150 (in 2002 terms) by 2007. The Budget also provided for all national minimum wage earners to be removed from the tax net.
Overall the ten special initiatives were meant to bring about imaginative solutions to longstanding and intractable problems in Irish society. It could be said that bringing these issues to the fore was the best success of this agreement as seeing any resolution to very deep rooted societal issues such as long-term unemployment, socio-economic deprivation and exclusion would be very difficult to achieve in a three year life span and just as hard to measure. But with these issues clearly in the frame for action and interdepartmental co-operation moving forward Towards 2016, there is at least a basis to look for progress and a space for the INOU to continue to lobby on behalf of those who are unemployed or distant from the labour market to bring about the conditions for full employment and a truly inclusive society.