Government's 'crocodile tears' not enough say CCI

The Chambers of Commerce of Ireland (CCI) has accused the Government of being the single biggest obstacle to restoring Ireland's competitiveness.

Electricity, property, health insurance and minimum wage costs are among a catalogue of complaints to doing business in Ireland Put forward by CCI President, Mark Staunton.

Staunton also urged the Government to make clear its intentions on future stealth taxes.

"Shedding crocodile tears at redundancy announcements are not enough," he said.

"The Government must realise that it is currently the biggest threat to restoring Ireland's competitiveness," he added.

In particular the CCI criticised the recent benchmarking pay awards.

"The current situation of more highly paid public servants employed in jobs but without the budgets necessary to do their jobs would be funny if it

was not so serious.

"The irony of having to foot a large part of the bill for the benchmarking bonanza for pubic sector staff while at the same time asking their own staff to accept a pay freeze or indeed the loss of their job is surely not lost on many businesses at this time," Staunton concluded.

He was speaking ahead of the CCI's AGM in Dublin today.