The author of a study on wages in Europe has said newspaper reports that Irish people are now richer than Germans are misleading, and admitted that parts of his document were based on old data.
Both business leaders and trade unions have questioned the reliability of the figures. In a press release issued by the London-based consultants Sedgwick Noble Lowndes earlier this week, the company said it could show that "employees on national average earnings have a better standard of living in Luxembourg, Austria and Ireland than in other parts of the European Union".
The figures came from the company's Guide to Employee Benefits and Labour Law in Europe, and suggested that the hourly take-home pay, after a series of adjustments and calculations, was highest in Luxembourg, at the equivalent of $11 (£7.59) and lowest in Portugal at $4.70 (£3.24). Irish workers were said to bring home $10.40 (£7.17), compared to the British, Belgians and Spanish at $10.10 (£6.97), the Germans at $9.60 (£6.62) and the French at $9.40 (£6.48).
The press release, which was not accompanied by any background statistics, provoked articles which claimed that Irish workers were taking home more money than their German counterparts. The Daily Telegraph headlined its story: "Irish labourers earn more back home."
But the author of the document, Mr David Formosa, said yesterday that a number of factors had been excluded from his calculations and said its value was "limited".
"Our research is based on an average wage for a male, full-time employee. I cannot stress that enough," he said. "I put my hand up - statistics are just statistics."
He said the calculations that placed Ireland higher than Germany, France and the Netherlands revolved around an average wage of £18,200. Although the real average wage in the Republic is probably closer to £14,000, this figure had been arrived at by using purchasing power parity percentages from the OECD, converting the total into dollars, then working that back into pounds.
The OECD figures were themselves based on a notional basket of purchases, he admitted, and, in the meantime, the foreign exchange rates had changed quite a bit.
Also, while the take-home pay figure for Ireland takes VHI contributions into consideration, it does not count the extra cost of housing and education, areas covered in many continental countries by income tax.
"Another thing we simply cannot factor in is the higher standard of benefits - the healthcare benefits are probably better, for example, in Germany, the unemployment benefits are better and this would obviously impact on someone's standard of living," Mr Formosa said.
All farmers, women and part-time workers were also excluded from the survey. He said the survey was designed to assist companies planning how much to pay employees in wages and pensions, and had "a limited value" outside of this function.
IBEC, the business lobby, said the survey failed to take into account essential differences in the spending patterns of life in Ireland compared to other European countries.
The organisation's director of economic affairs, Mr Brian Geoghegan, said Irish people spent significantly more on housing than other Europeans and typically had their houses paid for when they came to retire. On the continent, workers tended to spend less on rent, but invested more in their pensions so that they could go on paying their way after retirement.
But he added that the combined impact of surveys such as this could show the direction in which a country was moving.
"It does show that our standard of living has increased. No one would say we would have been anywhere near these levels 10 years ago," Mr Geoghegan said.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) also said the Sedgwick Noble Lowndes document was misleading.
"For example, a parent in Ireland paying a thousand pounds a year towards the cost of their child's education and a parent in Germany having all costs paid for by the state is not taken into account by this survey," said ICTU's research and information officer, Mr Oliver Donohoe.
