PRIVATE sector workers are paying £31 a week to subsidise high wages in the public sector, the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association has claimed.

ISME says the average wage in the public sector is now £27,000 a year, compared to the average industrial wage in the private sector of only £14,500. The Government risks serious industrial unrest and rapidly rising unemployment if the difference continues to increase, it warns.

The association's figures have, been dismissed as "a nonsense by public sector union leaders. The general secretary of the Civil and Public Sector Union, Mr John O'Dowd, said they "seriously distort the reality" of public sector pay.

Mr O'Dowd said that since the advent of public pay agreements in 1987, all private and public sector employees had got the same increases.