Dukes slams Benchmarking

BENCHMARKING is putting a strain on the economy and hindering attempts to increase the country’s competitiveness, former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes said yesterday.

Mr Dukes said the introduction of benchmarking was a mistake and had resulted in little or no increased productivity while placing an extra burden on the economy.

“There should be no benchmarking. That has been a very, very unwise decision and it is putting a burden on the productive parts of the economy that are finding it increasingly difficult to bear,” he said.

Speaking on RTE radio, the Fine Gael Party vice president said people had to realise and accept that wages were now too high.

“We need to change the way we pay ourselves. Being uncompetitive or becoming less competitive means we’re paying ourselves more than we’re actually worth in terms of what we’re exporting,” Mr Dukes said, pointing out that there was scant evidence of extra productivity from professional categories covered by the benchmarking agreements.

The former TD, who lost his Dáil seat in the last general election, also predicted that the coming years would be difficult ones for the economy and the country in general.

“Things are rather difficult. We had virtual stagnation last year, very little growth in the first half of this year, a difficult budgetary situation facing the Minister for Finance, unemployment going up, competitiveness being very sharply eroded and I think all of those put together make for a big difficulty.

“We’re in for a couple of years of very, very sluggish economic conditions here. It’s going to mean that a lot of expectations in terms of income and of employment will be unfulfilled,” he warned.

Mr Dukes warned the future would be bleak unless infrastructure is sufficiently developed through a reduction of construction inflation and the speeding up of the behind schedule goals of the National Development Plan.

“Unless something changes we are not going to see any substantial change in the fundamentals of the competitiveness of the economy for some time.

“Building up our infrastructure is one way of ensuring our competitiveness in the future. We’re way behind on most of the main areas of the National Development Plan so what we need to do now is to redirect our focus so that we can speed that up,” he said.