Workers in Limerick and across country should stop "thumbing their noses" at lower paid jobs according to the Chief Economist for FÁS.

Brian McCormack has warned that Irish workers will have to "realign" their wage expectations in the coming years and start considering minimum wage jobs.

He also said that many foreign migrants would soon leave Ireland as employment prospects in their home countries improve.

Speaking to The Breakfast Show on Newstalk 106-108 fm, Mr McCormack said that Irish people who have lost jobs in the construction sector would have to accept lower wages when looking for new jobs. "A lot of the minimum wage jobs have been taken up by foreign nationals. Irish people have thumbed their noses at these jobs. There definitely will have to be a realignment of Irish people starting to think: 'I will have to take a minimum wage job as a ladder to progress into higher employment'," he said.

"The construction sector in Poland is doing extremely well, the Zloty is extremely high, so in terms of their ability to get comparable wages it's pretty good, in terms of standard of living it's quite good—so you'd expect to see a lot of Polish people leaving."

DCU President, Professor Ferdinand Von Prondzinski, also said on the show that he predicted that third level fees would be introduced by 2010 and that this would be necessary in terms of re-skilling Irish workers who were now facing redundancies.

"I think it's almost no longer a question of whether we should we have fees. It's a question of do we have any choice. Because the level of resourcing that third level and fourth level also requires—in order to be internationally competitive and deal with the kind of [re-skilling] issues you've been mentioning—the kind of resourcing required is way beyond what the tax payer is able and willing to put into the system," he explained.

"The earliest it could happen, even theoretically, is for Autumn 2009. I don't actually think that's going to happen, however, I don't think we're going to be quick enough for that. If I were a betting man I'd say autumn 2010."

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment