Killing the patient

AVIVA is cutting its costs for sound business reasons. Other companies will follow suit for the same reasons.

Ireland is an industrial basket-case in terms of its labour policies and practices. We have grossly inflated perceptions of what we are entitled to receive for a day’s work, we have pension entitlements that only an oil-rich country could pay for, we have governmental structures that are too big and costly for the size of our economy, and our public services are riddled with restrictive work practices that inflate earnings and produce nothing. To suggest that we can avoid the economic medicine that is our only hope of recovery amounts to selling snake oil to a dying patient.

Hugh Doyle