Govt to receive Lisbon vote research

cabinteelytom

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0907/lisbon.html
RTE reports that next week the government receives the final version of research to assess why people voted no to Lisbon in the referendum. Speaking to reporters at the meeting (yet another!) of EU foreign ministers in Avignon on Saturday Micheal Martin also said, 'the Government has been asked by a number of US companies if Ireland might leave the EU, and whether they should continue to invest here.'
Comment:
'Research' to find out what the Irish people are thinking.... but great weight given to personal contacts from US company [lobbyists].
Isn't that rather telling us what the problem has been?

irish_bob

cabinteelytom wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0907/lisbon.html
RTE reports that next week the government receives the final version of research to assess why people voted no to Lisbon in the referendum. Speaking to reporters at the meeting (yet another!) of EU foreign ministers in Avignon on Saturday Micheal Martin also said, 'the Government has been asked by a number of US companies if Ireland might leave the EU, and whether they should continue to invest here.'
Comment:
'Research' to find out what the Irish people are thinking.... but great weight given to personal contacts from US company [lobbyists].
Isn't that rather telling us what the problem has been?

not sure what you mean exactly , could you clarify the last part

cabinteelytom

www.heritage.org/index/ gives one an insight into what advice has been accepted by the Government.
Ireland is ranked 3rd place in the countries of the world in the 'Index of Economic Freedom'- top place in europe. Good protection for property rights and little protection for workers' rights is the short version.
After the boom had employed all the unemployed in Ireland, further economic growth (when there was no-one to be employed) was against the interests of Irish civil society.
The boom was mismanaged

Hitman Actual

cabinteelytom wrote: »

www.heritage.org/index/ gives one an insight into what advice has been accepted by the Government.
Ireland is ranked 3rd place in the countries of the world in the 'Index of Economic Freedom'- top place in europe. Good protection for property rights and little protection for workers' rights is the short version.

Where do you find the information in that link that there is little protection for workers rights in Ireland?

cabinteelytom wrote: »

After the boom had employed all the unemployed in Ireland, further economic growth (when there was no-one to be employed) was against the interests of Irish civil society.

I'm no economist, but this is a joke, surely?

cabinteelytom wrote: »

The boom was mismanaged

No question, agree totally.

cabinteelytom

The Index ('a product of the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal') scores Ireland highly because 'it takes only 13 days to start a business and ...bankrupcy procedures are simple and straightforward.' Ireland also scores highly because 'dismissing redundant employees is relatively costless. Restrictions on number of working hours are flexible.'
The companies may have no obligations to their temporarily engaged ex-employees; but the Irish State/taxpayer/Irish society finds it has loads of obligations to people and their families now living in it's territory.

Hitman Actual

cabinteelytom wrote: »

The Index ('a product of the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal') scores Ireland highly because 'it takes only 13 days to start a business and ...bankrupcy procedures are simple and straightforward.' Ireland also scores highly because 'dismissing redundant employees is relatively costless. Restrictions on number of working hours are flexible.'
The companies may have no obligations to their temporarily engaged ex-employees; but the Irish State/taxpayer/Irish society finds it has loads of obligations to people and their families now living in it's territory.

Is that a response to me, or just a veiled xenophobic post? In any case, you seem to be under the impression that Irish labor laws are draconian in their nature but the reality is that Irish labor rights compare well with, and are significantly better than, most other countries. I'm not saying they're perfect by any means, but we're not quite the repressed people that you like to think (but again, it's pretty obvious that your comments are just a vehicle for your xenophobic ramblings).

cabinteelytom

I'm just contributing facts and opinions to an educated debate.
As economic growth exceeded the people available to staff it; our Government needed to de-tune the economy.
Long-successful European states chose to be in the teens on this kind of world ranking eg Switzerland 9, Belgium 19, Austria 30.

O'Morris

lenny_leonard wrote: »

Is that a response to me, or just a veiled xenophobic post?

(but again, it's pretty obvious that your comments are just a vehicle for your xenophobic ramblings).

What are you on about? What xenophobic ramblings?

Hitman Actual

The two comments below imply that (a) if we don't have the labor capacity to meet economic growth, we still shouldn't allow migrant workers to help meet the labor shortage, and (b) the OP is resentful of the fact that the state has to support said migrant workers in any downturn:

cabinteelytom wrote:

After the boom had employed all the unemployed in Ireland, further economic growth (when there was no-one to be employed) was against the interests of Irish civil society.

cabinteelytom wrote:

but the Irish State/taxpayer/Irish society finds it has loads of obligations to people and their families now living in it's territory.

O'Morris

lenny_leonard wrote: »

The two comments below imply that (a) if we don't have the labor capacity to meet economic growth, we still shouldn't allow migrant workers to help meet the labor shortage

That's not the point that was being made. The point that was being made is that once we have full employment any additional growth in the labour force will have only marginal benefit and may even incur costs on the society as a whole.

We had full employment in the country until recently and many of us saw no need to pursue an open-doors immigration policy that expanded the work-force beyond a level that gave any real benefit to the economy. Now that we're in a downturn we can see the longer-term costs that that expansion in the labour force will have on our economy.

lenny_leonard wrote:

(b) the OP is resentful of the fact that the state has to support said migrant workers in any downturn:

There's a difference between being resentful and acknowledging an uncomfortable fact that many people would rather ignore. Large numbers of immigrants are receiving support from the state and are costing us millions of Euros at a time when we can ill-afford to be generous.

In the interests of balance we need to face up to the costs as well as the benefits of immigration.

Hitman Actual

My problem is that the OP started off with some weird comment on FDI and the Government poll (at least I think that was his point, it's pretty vague), before using a US think-tank website to say that Irish workers have very little protection (unfounded, imo), while all the time really trying to rake up an issue that has been done to death in other threads (immigration).

Scofflaw

O'Morris wrote: »

That's not the point that was being made. The point that was being made is that once we have full employment any additional growth in the labour force will have only marginal benefit and may even incur costs on the society as a whole.

We had full employment in the country until recently and many of us saw no need to pursue an open-doors immigration policy that expanded the work-force beyond a level that gave any real benefit to the economy. Now that we're in a downturn we can see the longer-term costs that that expansion in the labour force will have on our economy.

Ah - well, there I may be able to help you. The benefit to the economy of immigration, and the reason the government chose to open the doors immediately after Nice is as follows:

Assume we have a workforce of 100 (Irish) people. Assume we have an economy of 10 companies, each of which employs 10 workers - so we have full employment, and no spare workers. Further, assume that each of those companies brings in €100 per worker and pays €90 to each worker - so we have an economy of €10,000. The government takes 20% of each worker's wages (€18) and 10% of each company's profit (€10) - so our government has a revenue of €1900

Imagine Company 1 sees an opportunity to expand. It has room for 1 more worker. Where will it get the extra worker from? There are no free workers available, so it will have to raise the salary it offers to €91, in order to tempt someone away from another company. However, the other companies aren't going to take that lying down, since they need all their workers themselves, so they respond by raising wages.

We enter a wage spiral, where the companies bid each other up to the limits of profitability. It sounds great, because the workers get higher and higher average wages, until they're receiving €99 each. The government's tax take goes up to €1981, so presumably they're happy too.

There are two drawbacks. First, prices will have risen, because higher wages are now chasing the same items such as houses, which means that people will not get the benefit of the rise in salaries. Second, Ireland is no longer a competitive location for FDI - indeed, for investment of any kind. If you're looking for somewhere to set up a company, you don't choose a place where wage costs will swallow 99% of your revenue.

Obviously, that's a simplification, but it contains the essential point. Up to 2001/2002, wages were rising extremely steeply, because every company was chasing the same small pool of workers. That would be fine, except that we are utterly reliant on FDI - 95% of Irish exports are made by resident multinationals - unless we want to go back to 'national self-sufficiency'.

The government, I think, looked at our downward spiral of wage competitiveness, and looked East, and decided that that was where the solution lay. I also suspect they reckoned on getting about 7 years out of it, until the other member states opened their doors, and any excess of immigrants would disappear - although they'd disappear earlier if there was a downturn. In a sense, I think the rather cynical plan was to use the immigrants to expand Ireland's economy, and shed them in any downturn.

cordially,
Scofflaw