Outgoing Irish Congress of Trade Unions President Jack O'Connor has warned the time may come when they will have to advocate default on Ireland's debt.

However, he warned that such a move could have serious consequences for jobs and public services.

Mr O'Connor said so far Congress had not supported calls for default on Ireland's debt as a way of escaping the 'straitjacket' of the Troika agreement. However, he said it may well come to do so.

Addressing the ICTU conference in Killarney, Mr O'Connor said opinion was divided as to potential consequences of threatening default.

Mr O'Connor cautioned that ICTU could not anticipate the response of the European Central Bank, which could withdraw support from Ireland's covered banks.

He said it could not forecast how default would play with global companies upon which so many people depended for their livelihoods.

However, he said he was pretty certain it would mean balanced budgets overnight, which would be devastating for working people and all who depend on public services.

ICTU General Secretary David Begg said the time might come when defaulting on Ireland's debt could be the lesser of two evils, but said that position had not arisen at this point in time.

Sale of assets

Congress passed a motion calling for 'structured resistance' to the sale of State assets as advocated in the McCarthy report.

The motion calls for resistance to include concerted political lobbying, selective action in threatened entities, mobilising community support for demonstrations, and a 'national referendum' on the sale of the people's assets to be held simultaneously at all union offices throughout the country.

Delegates also passed an emergency motion supporting the workers who lost their jobs at the Rostrevor House Nursing Home in south Dublin.

The motion urged Congress to seek enhanced protections for whistleblowers - particularly where their whistleblowing results in the closure of their employment and the consequent loss of their jobs.

Pension proposal

Mr O'Connor also suggested a plan for the better use of pension funds.

Under the scheme, the pension funds would be used to invest in building work and be exempted from the recently announced pension levy.

Mr O'Connor said there was €78bn in pension fund assets.

He called on the Minister for Finance to engage with pension fund trustees to develop a scheme to secure 5% of their assets - or around €4bn - to invest in infrastructure and venture capital in the domestic economy and create jobs.

Gross fixed capital investment in the economy had fallen from more than €46bn in 2007 to less than €19bn this year, he said.

The ICTU president said that his pension fund proposal would more than offset the deflationary effect of the €3.6bn cut scheduled for Budget 2012 and create upwards of 80,000 jobs.

He also called for the remaining €4bn-€5bn in the National Pension Reserve Fund to be used to drive a job generating investment programme.

He warned that the British government was committed to cutting spending by €80bn over four years.

He said that would translate into £4bn being cut in Northern Ireland, resulting in the loss of 25,000 public sector jobs, 15,000 private sector jobs - or one in eight of Northern Ireland jobs.

Mr O'Connor criticised plans to dismantle the wage setting mechanisms for the low paid, saying that if job creation was the Government's real objective, it would have dealt with the issue of upward only rent reviews long ago.

He said people in difficulty with their mortgages must receive a firm and absolute guarantee that their homes will never be repossessed a long as they are making a genuine effort to service their mortgages.

Mr O'Connor said the parties that shared the legacy of Connolly and of Collins should aspire to more and the people who elected them had a right to expect them to aspire to more.

He called for a Marshall Aid type strategy to rescue Europe both economically and politically, but said those in charge had instead opted for the shock therapy of a reparations course.

Meanwhile, a delegate at the conference called for the leadership of the trade union movement to step down and accused them of being too placid.

Sinead McKenna of the Civil Public & Services Union accused the ICTU leadership of becoming so embedded in social partnership structures that they had forgotten their original purpose.

CPSU general secretary Blair Horan said that Ms McKenna's views did not represent the views of the union.

