Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We have an interest in that because some of the political consequences of what is happening in the United States and due to Brexit are due to the level of wages paid for rural American industrial jobs.

My second question is related and is based on figure 2.7 on page 42. To be perfectly honest, I could not understand the graph. I wondered why it was going back on itself. I am interested in productivity growth and where it was said that real wage growth is forecast to be slightly below productivity growth from 2018 to 2021. Where is our measure of productivity growth? How does one measure that? The figures for 2018 to 2021 are based on projections but where do they come from? How is our productivity growth occurring? I ask because I remember a line from someone in the middle of the crisis to the effect that if only we had tucked in behind Germany and had the same productivity growth it had and we were not losing competitiveness in that sense we would have been fine in the euro. People blamed the euro but it was because we lost our productivity and competitiveness. If we are to learn the lessons, then we must avoid the conditions being recreated whereby the euro environment might be out of step again with Irish economic circumstances. To a certain extent, as long as we can maintain productivity and competitiveness compared to Germany in particular - our biggest currency partner - we are okay. I always find it difficult to find out the productivity statistics and who measures them. How certain are we about productivity?