Irish Exporters Association express concern that the rate of Public Sector Reform is not sufficient, and will inevitably force the private sector to meet Government deficit, thus slowing recovery. Recently the IEA responded to the release by Minister for Public Expenditure & Reform, Brendan Howlin T.D. of the Government’s public sector reform programme, stated; Reducing the Public sector pay bill of € 21 billion by 2.5% per year over the next 4 years is not a sufficiently robust response to the critical economic situation we find ourselves in.
The burden of closing the borrowing gap of €15 billion p.a. to pay our on-going monthly Government expenses, is not been adequately addressed by the Programme released yesterday.
The IEA are concerned that the vast majority of the Government spending shortfall will now fall on the private sector, and will inevitable impact on the ability of businesses to grow and expand into export markets.
John Whelan, CEO of the Irish Exporters Association stated;
‘’This Programme was supposed to have been a Comprehensive Review of Government Expenditure in the public sector for the period to 2016 , and it falls well short of the mark.’’
‘’It is hard to see how current government expenditure can be reduced to a satisfactory level without tackling public sector pay , and this issue has not been addressed to any real extent in the Programme .’’
‘’The concern of export industry is that now the burden of meeting the Government’s current expenditure short fall will have to be borne by the private sector by way of PRSI increases , excise increases on fuel , and VAT . All of which will slow up job creation, consumer expenditure and export growth .’’
