In a speech to the Beverage Council of Ireland, he made a scathing attack on the public service, claiming they were overpaid, un-sackable and too protected by unions.

SIPTU responded angrily to the claims, saying Min-ister McGuinness should look at his own performance before attacking others.

At the heart of Minister McGuinness's extraordinary attack on a body, which includes nurses, doctors, gardai and teachers, is that "Our public service, over-protected by unions, is destroying the morale of those who drive the economy forward".

He went on to say that while he wasn't talking about those "coalface" occupations, many workers in the public service, who enjoyed inflated pensions and wages, were unprofessional, under-qualified and virtually unsackable.

"I am particularly concerned by the fact that the public service continues to employ, adding more and more people who are almost impossible to let go, and who will in due course be getting inflation-proof salaries and pensions," the Minister said.

He added that the Government should warn unions that the pay and conditions of new public sector employees would be substantially different in the future.

In the wake of the attack, SIPTU responded by suggesting the Minister's own productivity was "far from satisfactory, even in his own constituency" of Kil-kenny and Carlow.

SIPTU's South East regional secretary Christy McQuillan said the Minister needed to address his own shortcomings.

"He needs to take a critical look at his own stewardship before he starts throwing mud at public service workers who have had all their increases under To-wards 2016 and benchmarking vetted by a comprehensive verification process," Mr McQuillan said.

"Flexibility, productivity and work practice changes are a major feature of these verification assessments within each employment and sector of the public service."

"Given his own performance I doubt if Mr Mc-Guinness would pass the test."

To illustrate his point, Mr McQuillan gave the example of the 160 former Comerama employees who were promised increased redundancy entitlements in 2003.

"This Minister witnessed commitments being given to 160 Comerama textile workers in Castlecomer by the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Harney, when they were made redundant in 2003, that they would be included in any change in the formula for statutory redundancy calculations," he said.

"This commitment has still not been honoured and so the workers ended up with only half a week to one weeks' redundancy pay per year of service, instead of the improved entitlement of two weeks," he added.