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

Foreword

I acknowledge the amount of time and effort that has gone into the making of this agreement. This reflects both the importance of the issues under discussion and the central importance attached by all sides to maintaining our system of social partnership.

Social Partnership has helped to maintain a strategic focus on key national priorities, and has created and sustained the conditions for remarkable employment growth, fiscal stability, restructuring of the economy to respond to new challenges and opportunities, a dramatic improvement in living standards, through both lower taxation and lower inflation, and a culture of dialogue, which has served the social partners, but more importantly, the people of this country, very well.

Obviously, the challenges of today are different from those of the dark days of 1987, but they are no less complex, and meeting them together is no less important. Now, as then, partnership, as a problem solving mechanism, offers the best way forward.

Towards 2016 offers the best way forward by providing an important and strategic framework for meeting the economic and social challenges ahead. Each of the previous social partnership agreements has had a particular focus and has contained significant innovations. In this respect Towards 2016 develops a new framework to address key social challenges, which the individual faces at each stage of life. This means a focus on the needs of children, young adults, people of working age, older people and people with disabilities.

This ambitious approach will pose a major challenge – public services will need to be designed around individuals and their requirements, rather than based on different administrative boundaries. This approach will take time to deliver and the agreement sets out how we propose to measure and review progress over a ten-year framework agreement.

I commend the parties on all sides for the sustained commitment and leadership they have shown throughout the long and protracted negotiating process. We in Government look forward to working closely with the Social Partners to realise the ambitions we share by the historically significant date highlighted by the title, Towards 2016.

Bertie Ahern, T.D.,

Taoiseach

I dTreo 2016: Comhaontú Comhpháirtíochta Sóisialta Deich mBliana 2006-2015

Agriculture Final Text.rtf (272 KB)
Towards2016PartnershipAgreement.pdf (3004 KB)
Towards 2016PartnershipAgreement.rtf (593 KB)
Agriculture Final Text.pdf (90 KB)

To view and print PDF files, a viewer program called Acrobat Reader Version is required. A free copy of this Adobe Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe Website