Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If I could maybe just refer on the ... there's two statements there; I just want to address. One is from the Wright report and it's under the heading there - whether income was a cause. Just a mid-paragraph analysis.

Wage settlements accelerated markedly from the late 90s, in absolute and in relative terms. The "trilateral" wage agreements continued but became less relevant as workers negotiated supplementary wage increases against the background of full employment and an overheating economy. Compensation per employee, which had grown more or less in line with the euro area average until 1996, increased at two to three times the euro area average from 1997 to 2008. In nominal terms, annual gross wages in Ireland in 2007 were the highest in the euro area except Luxembourg. Ireland had also the highest price level in the euro area according to Eurostat statistics. Competitiveness deteriorated significantly.

That's from Regling and Watson.

On the next column below it there, and I'll just take the mid-paragraph out of that, it says:

But budgetary policy veered more toward spending money while revenues came in. In addition, the pattern of tax cuts left revenues increasingly fragile, since they were dependent on taxes driven by the property sector and by high consumer spending. Ireland was also unusual in having tax deductibility for mortgages, and significant and distortive subsidies for commercial real estate development, yet no property tax.

Now, the premise that could be presented by these statements is that social partnership was a win-win for everybody and everybody was going to get something out of the pot. But that, in reality, the pot wasn't big enough to accommodate everybody's needs and there wasn't enough in there and eventually it would come asunder. The ... those five reports are quite critical of the social partnership model to all parties associated, not just workers, but business and all the rest. How would you respond to those criticisms, do you think that they're valid, or that they're inaccurate or would you like an opportunity to address the criticisms that have been raised in those reports, Mr. Begg?