We must not allow wages drift upwards

It has been claimed on many occasions over recent years, and particularly in the banking inquiry, that nobody warned about what was going down in the economy in the build-up to the crisis. 

The clear impression has been created that policy makers were largely oblivious to the emerging risks.

This may have been the case for some of our policy makers and policy advisers, but not all. Progressively during the first eight years of the century, the National Competitiveness Council, which was set up in 1997 to advise the Government on key competitiveness issues facing the economy, and which comes under the umbrella of Forfás, warned about the evolution of cost competitiveness in the economy.