Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 June 2022

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

In the report, we are careful not to use the wage spiral language at every turn. It is a risk but exactly where to set wages is a really difficult judgment and we are not in position to have a strong view on that. Being fully compensated for inflation would lead to risks of even higher inflation, which would likely be self-defeating. Exactly where on the spectrum it is put would be a difficult judgment. It partly depends on what one might think would have happened otherwise as well in the sense that people would have otherwise got some wage increase anyway. There are some sectors that have relatively high productivity growth or there is a shortage of labour, so it is pretty hard to know how all of that fits together.

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