What have we done wrong apart from house prices ? Are we any more corrupt than other countries ?
And what have we done right apart from low corporation tax ?
What have we done wrong?
Allowed construction output to peak at almost 23% of GNP in 2006. Huge amounts of capital and labour were sucked into what is now a financial and economic black hole. If the construction sector were to shrink to 'normal' EU levels then we will have lost perhaps 10% of our economy.
Debates about the public sector aside, the real drivers of employment growth over the past 4/5 years have been the pubilc sector and the construction sector (with all the associated hiring in retail; services etc that were dependent on this).
We allowed inflation take hold and now workers (rightly) are demanding higher wages to compensate for this when in fact we need real wages to fall in order to restore competiveness (it took Germany a decade to do this). Ireland is a very expensive place to live in.
When did we last attract a flagship foreign company? We have completely failed to grow a domestic export sector yet the export sector is expected to now step up to the plate and rescue the economy. We are dependent on decisions taken in other countries for too much of our economic wellbeing.
Where are our domestic tech companies? When did and Iirsh company last list on the NASDAQ.
Knowledge economy? Not really. We need engineers and scientists but we have plumbers and estate agents. People are happy to believe that we have a well educated workforce but many IT companies are having trouble filling posts because I believe that we have a genuine educational and skills deficit. Why slog away at computer science when you could earn more as an electrician? For sure, we could attract overseas talent but see my point above about inflation.
Private sector credit almost equal to GNP! This will act as a severe drag on domestic consumption for years to come.
We need better infrastructure (the capital spending plan will address this in part but lack of €€€ will put a good portion on hold).
What have I missed?