TAOISEACH Brian Cowen will this weekend defiantly tell union leaders he is pushing ahead with public-sector pay cuts regardless of major strike action.

Teachers, psychiatric nurses and prison workers all voted overwhelmingly yesterday to stage a national strike on November 24. IMPACT, the largest public-sector union, and the Irish Nurses Organisation have already voted in favour of the strike.

And a second strike is planned before the Budget in December, the Irish Independent has learned.

But Mr Cowen insisted he would not back down on plans to slash the public-sector pay bill by €1.3bn and said the Government would deliver its blueprint for reform to union leaders this weekend.

The Taoiseach also starkly warned that services would suffer even more from cutbacks if there was not a reduction in the public-sector pay bill.

The looming industrial chaos here deepened as new figures showed the rest of the eurozone was emerging out of recession.

The Taoiseach warned that public services would suffer, unless government workers agreed to accept the cuts.

He said the Government would be circulating documents to union leaders over the weekend outlining its plans for public sector reforms.

"If we don't get a contribution from all areas of public expenditure, then you are putting a huge burden on the actual non-paid side of the equation to make the contribution, and that would greatly affect services -- even greater than what we are already planning to contemplate," he told the Irish Independent.

"What we are seeking to set out, I suppose there, is what will be required in broad terms, what the public service will look like in the next two to three years, as we apply the reforms to have a sustainable service.

"That's a matter that will now be discussed with them based on the paper that will be presented to them," he said.

Schools across the country will be closed on November 24 after teachers voted in favour of industrial action by a ratio of almost four-to-one.

A unanimous vote for the first 24-hour strike is expected across the public sector after the Psychiatric Nurses Association and the Prison Officers Association also overwhelmingly backed the stoppage yesterday.

The move is expected to increase the pressure on Fianna Fail backbenchers. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan insisted government TDs would not "shirk from doing their duty" when it came to voting for cuts in next month's Budget.

However, Fianna Fail Cork North Central TD Noel O'Flynn last night warned that backbenchers had "huge concerns" about the prospect of pensioners having their incomes cut by Mr Lenihan.

"The minister should be signalling there will be no reduction in old age pensions. If he did that, he would have the parliamentary party behind him," he said.

Mr Cowen also threw down the gauntlet to the opposition parties to reveal where they would cut €4bn from public spending and said he was willing to listen to proposals.

The Government is holding a special four-hour debate next week on the options facing the country in the budget and Mr Cowen is challenging Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labour leader Eamon Gilmore to say what they would do.

"whatever anyone can contribute to assist us coming through this period of extreme difficulty is how people expect us to proceed," he said.

"I just think it's an opportunity for everyone to put their proposals as part of the preparation for the budget.

"There's an opportunity for those not in government to put forward their views in a way that would contribute towards us achieving that goal, which we all agree is required," he added.

The Taoiseach indicated the Government was willing to take on any worthwhile ideas from the opposition parties.

"The Minister for Finance and I, of course, will listen to any constructive proposals," he said. Speaking earlier, Mr Lenihan put public workers on notice that they would also face significant changes to their work practices and employment on top of the pay cuts.

However, furious senior union leaders warned a second strike that would close schools and leave essential public services like hospitals with Christmas Day-levels of cover was now looming.

IMPACT general secretary Peter McLoone indicated further strikes may be necessary, while Blair Horan, the leader of the union for lower-paid civil servants, the Civil, Public and Services Union, also told his branch secretaries that one day of action was not enough.

Fine Gael and Labour both urged public service unions to continue negotiations with the Government instead of inflicting strike action on the country's fragile economy.

Damaging

"I really don't think that the country can afford a series of damaging strikes," Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Mary Harney made an astonishing intervention in the debate yesterday when she criticised the very public-sector benchmarking process she had supported since 2002.

"Instead of benchmarking the public sector versus the private sector in the late 1990s, we should have all benchmarked ourselves against other countries in the EU. If we had, things would have been very different," she said.

She also criticised her Government's handling of the property collapse.

"Government should have been very questioning of the economic consensus that told us we would have a soft landing."

"There were a few out-fliers saying it wouldn't be soft, but they didn't form the consensus and we should have been more challenging."

The Taoiseach said the deflation in the economy of 6.5pc would have a bearing on the budget and the expectations of various sectors.

When there was inflation in the economy, people sought increases in wages and social welfare payments and now the reverse was happening.

"Just as people look for compensation on the way up, the principle of taking into account of how you are going to pay your bills applies in the opposite direction as well," Mr Cowen said.

- Anne-Marie Walsh, Michael Brennan and Fionnan Sheahan

Irish Independent