Business Opinion: Competition, we are told, is a good thing and we should have more of it, particularly in transport, professional services and of course banking. In theory it produces more efficient outcomes at lower cost. One area in which competition theory would appear to break down, however, is the domain of studies on how to make the economy more competitive.
Last week saw the publication of the National Competitiveness Council's seventh annual review of the economy and its assessment of the action to be taken to ensure continued economic success. The similarities between it and this summer's report from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) were so striking that William Burgess, the chairman of the NCC, felt compelled to comment that "many of these recommendations are consistent with those of the Enterprise Strategy Group" .
In fact the two reports overlap almost completely on the substance of what should be done in the short to medium term. They both want more money for research and development, more training, less regulation, more investment in education, low taxes and better infrastructure.
In many cases they are also in agreement on the specifics of how to implement these eminently desirable policies. Something in the region of half of the 52 specific recommendations made by the ESG are echoed almost verbatim by the NCC.
For example both bodies say that the Government should give more thought to the impact of regulatory changes before introducing them. The ESG calls for a Regulatory Impact Analysis process "that must be fully transparent" while the NCC wants a system of Regulatory Impact Assessment, the results of which "should be published and their quality tested in an independent fashion".
Similarly the ESG wants Enterprise Ireland and other "enterprise agencies" to organise "around groups of clients with common interests" while the NCC believes "Government and development agency supports for industry should be increasingly organised around industry-specific intervention to support 'clusters' of related enterprise activities".
One suspects that the NCC's thesaurus is a somewhat battered volume at this stage. In fact the whole thing would be very amusing if it did not represent such a colossal waste of taxpayers' money, not to mention the time and energy of people such as Mr Burgess who serve on these bodies out of a sense of duty.
It is also a little unfair to suggest that the NCC is a waste of money. It has been in existence for seven years and has a clear mandate to examine competitiveness issues and makes recommendations to enhance the economy's growth potential. Its theme may be competitiveness, but its brief is wider. But at the end of the day it is a quango and subject to all the shortcomings of such creatures.
The real waste of money was the Tánaiste's decision to establish the Enterprise Strategy Group last year. Even at the outset, the overlap between its brief - to propose policies to sustain competitiveness and promote a knowledge-driven economy - and the NCC's mandate were obvious. As a result, it should come as no surprise that the two reports cover the same ground, and it is a piece of turf that is well-trodden at this stage given that the NCC looks at these issues on an annual basis.
The truly alarming thing is the crossover between the ESG report and the NCC's 2003 report. Again, the language may be different but basically it is much the same stuff; a national strategy for entrepreneurship, a focus on clusters, getting more kids to finish second level education etc.
The promoters of the ESG argue that it was fundamentally different from the NCC because it was focused on long-term issues. Given the overlap with the NCC report, it either failed to do so, or else was unaware the NCC took a long-term view to its work.
At the end of the day the ESG appears to have come up with only one original piece of thinking that has not been covered to a greater or lesser extent by the NCC. It has identified shortfalls in Ireland's international sales and marketing capability as an area worthy of attention. It is a valid point, but it hardly justifies the establishment of a entire quango at a cost of €460,000.
