It is a far cry from the last decade when Irish parents were troubled by the job prospects for their children. Yesterday, a conference heard that finding and retaining staff will be the principal concern of chief executives in the coming year. There is, as we have known for some time, a grave labour shortage and the issue of retaining staff is as serious as finding them in the first place.
The Deloitte & Touche and Enterprise Ireland forum for chief executives was told that the availability of staff and employment costs are likely to be the largest constraints on the growth of the private sector economy. As many as 83 per cent of chief executives expect that expenditure on training and development will increase significantly in 2001.
What may have alarmed some participants at the forum is that their peers believe confidence in the economy is beginning to falter. In a survey of 200 companies carried out by Deloitte & Touche this month, only 65 per cent of chief executives expressed confidence that the economy will continue to grow over the next three years. In a similar survey last year, the figure was 94 per cent expressing confidence.
The problem is not entirely associated with labour shortages. The very success of Ireland's economic performance has attracted competitors to the domestic market who once would have considered it too small to be worth bothering with. The Tanaiste and Minister for Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, acknowledged the need to increase the labour supply. She also said that business must provide a friendly working environment and find means of remunerating and rewarding staff. In that respect, she welcomed the development of share option schemes. She then went on to warn companies of the need to be competitive.
What she did not do was explain how all these laudable objectives might be compatible. If Irish employees are to be rewarded on the scale she promotes, how is competitiveness to be retained? The Irish economy has a dependency on internationally mobile investment which will not hesitate to move to lower-cost areas of the world if ever the economy becomes uncompetitive.
Recruiting and retaining professionally-trained staff is a major issue facing many sectors of the economy. In a recent report, CERT produced an admirable analysis for its own constituency - the tourism and hospitality industry. It admitted that there are no quick-fix solutions to the problem. An essential start, however, is a sound, statistically-based analysis. Ms Harney might do worse than persuade the Economic and Social Research Institute to carry out a major project on the issue of job retention. She might even persuade the Minister for Finance to pay for it. It would be money well spent.