New Economic Model Needed

8 Jul 2009

Congress General Secretary David Begg has strongly condemned economists and commentators who insist that cuts in social welfare and low wages offer the only way out of the current crisis.

"They must have ice water running through their veins," Mr Begg told delegates. "They seem indifferent to the consequences of their solutions.

"I am not aware of any country that has ever deflated its way out of a recession. It seems to me too that there is a certain threshold of decency that we should not cross no matter how bad things are. Cutting the minimum wage and basic welfare rates crosses that threshold."

Opening the Economic Debate, Mr Begg also condemned the 'banking class' that had now burdened the country with huge levels of debt, as a result of their greed, incompetence and arrogance: "The cost of unwinding the consequences of this will be borne for Irish people for generations to come. It is an outrage."

Delegates debated motions on pensions and the economy, including one which called on the trade union movement to "advocate effectively for the type of economic restructuring which is sustainable in the longer term and the creation of a new orthodoxy which sees the economy embedded in society and not the other way around."