Ireland will fall rapidly behind its competitors if it fails to embrace and build on the benefits of becoming a multicultural economy, through allowing appropriate migration.
That was the warning issued yesterday by Prof John FitzGerald of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) at the Merriman Summer School in Ennistymon, Co Clare.
In a paper entitled "Ireland - an Ageing Multicultural Economy" Prof FitzGerald said: "At a time when we are promoting Ireland as a centre for world-class research, we are simultaneously doing our best to discourage world-class researchers from ever setting foot in Ireland."
He continued: "What is required is an explicit policy on immigration that is seen to be both transparent and fair."
Prof FitzGerald noted, however, that the substantial influx of less-skilled migrants over the last four years, if continued indefinitely, could push unskilled wage rates down, with consequential effects on unemployment.
He also claimed that the Government's approach in building up the State's National Pensions Reserve Fund is unfair to today's generation of children.
The professor said that currently, the Government was saving 1 per cent a year of GNP out of the public finances and putting it into the fund to part-fund the State's pension liabilities after 2030.
He said: "The provision to save out of current income to part-fund the pensions of today's working generation seemed, at first sight, to be appropriate.
"To the extent that the generation that is working in 25 years time will be smaller than the current generation, the burden of a pay-as-you-go pension scheme will rise considerably. This would seem to be unfair to today's generation of children.
"By part-funding this future liability, the burden of old age may be shared more equitably between the generations."
Prof FitzGerald said that to manage the increased dependency burden, the State should promote a higher birth rate, increase the retirement age and change the proportion of the population actually working, while migration could help restore a more balanced population structure.
Reflecting on Ireland's recent economic boom, Prof FitzGerald said: "The secret of success was not the discovery of a brilliant strategy, but rather the abandonment of a string of disastrous idiosyncratic policies.
"Ireland just stopped failing and, as a result, restored itself to where it could and should have been without the disastrous "Sinn Féin" policies of the first 40 or 50 years of the State." He said the three main factors behind Ireland's recovery were adoption of free trade, investment in education and demography changes.
