Did you hear the news . . . the Recession is over

I agree with most of your post but I do think we overplay the education point here. The heads of a number of US multinationals have come out recently and companies about the standard of graduates. Ask a German, Swiss, Dutch of American engineer about the great Irish engineers and they will laugh at you. I’m not saying we’re useless but we are nothing special. I know the teachers unions have peddled the “world class education system” rubbish for years in order to justify their gargantuan salaries and holidays and their Lilliputian hours but we all know why they did that.
 

I agree, as an engineer myself, but then I'd probably be more Germanic in my idea of an engineering being mechanical, here it's largely civil (again fuelled by the construction boom).

But the education here isn't perfect, it has many legitimate issues, but even with all that it still has a good reputation as does the population.
 
Standard of education is seriously overrated in this Country. The leaving cert is a joke and the third level institutions are massively underfunded (apart from salaries) due to politicians refusal to admit that their 'free' education policy is a farce.

I think the Irish people have a good reputation in the workplace though.
 
So it seems that hard work and cost competitiveness are what is needed for an economic recovery and the notion that we can "smart economy" our way out of it is just as delusional as the soft landing that we were going to get after the property boom.

When will we learn?
 
i agree fully with the last few posts.....i never did buy into this BS notion of 'our highly educated workforce' there are emerging countries that are turning out students as good and better than ours by the thousands!
as for the 'smart economy' have to agree with purple on that.....its never going to get us out of this mess.
 
Purple said:
Why would anyone work for €3 when the dole pays more than that?
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If you were a newly arrived immigrant from eastern europe, and weren`t entitled to welfare , you`d gladly work for 3 euros an hour to start.
I see in some job sites applicants are willing to work a few days free to showcase their talents.
An employer can get cheap or free labour from Fas "job experience" candidates,or get some financial incentive for taking someone off the live register.
The idea here is that once you get working with a company, you establish what your true "worth" and thus wage rate should be.
This is a good idea, but in a recession with few jobs around,it is difficult to get your foot in the door
Of course alot of people are on welfare rates that make it difficult for them get the same amount in a job.
Anyway we are in a recession and there are very few jobs around.
 
Latrade said:
I agree, as an engineer myself, but then I'd probably be more Germanic in my idea of an engineering being mechanical, here it's largely civil (again fuelled by the construction boom).

But the education here isn't perfect, ...
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I agree and handing someone a bit of paper and saying "go thou forth and be a software / civil / mechanical / electronic engineer" isn't education, it's simply expensive vocational training and I believe one of the mistakes we've made over the years is to confuse the two.

Of course we have a need for properly trained and properly qualified graduates from specialist, tightly focussed, vocational training programmes but what we seem to lack IMHO are educated generalists who can help steer us out the current slump through having a broader view than a sub-atomic version of a wafer-fab facility (I know that's probably a materials scientist rather that an engineer, but you get the idea).

Our 2nd and 3rd level systems force children to specialise and narrow their focus much too soon, thereby depriving them of an education and stuffing them onto the vocational-training conveyor belt.

I love, for example, what the medics have done here and in the UK where they have designed the means of taking holders of non-medical degrees and training them as doctors. Will these men and women make better doctors? I have no idea and wouldn't know how to measure "better doctor", but they must surely be more rounded in their development as individuals and that is surely good for their clients, the health service system they work within and thus the country as a whole.
 
Latrade said:
But we're ignoring other issues, like energy costs, rental costs, local authority charges, waste costs, water costs, administration and regulatory costs. There's little we or an employer can do on them.
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Almost all issues you mention there are wage driven.

Individual employers can't personal control all of their costs through wage restrictions but collectively we can have a huge impact on the cost of doing business and ultimately the cost of living.

It's no coincidence that electricity costs are high when the ESB has an average wage of about €100k, thankfully we're now seeing a bit of competition here, and it's having a real impact on bringing down costs
 
Heard that this morning. I dunno. Lots of people I have spoken to (primarily manufacturing and services) are seeing a fairly dramatic (relatively speaking) increase in sales over the last few months. We are too.

I get the impression that hospitality and high street retail will take a lot longer to recover though. Still pubs/restaurants/shops closing at a frightening rate.
 
I think it will end after the next election. I think that most people and most potential investors are in a holding pattern right now - will not make a decision until they have more certainty on the future government and its policies. Whoever is elected, will have the support of the people, which will boost public confidence.
 
The recession will be techinically over by the end of the year (it not sooner).

The problem is that it won't feel like that for the man on the street. Exports will lead the recovery but domestic demand will remain very weak.
 
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