IBEC and ISME have expressed further concern about the growing problems in recruiting employees. IBEC has called for "clear-headed policymaking" to manage the problems. The approach should be both pragmatic and ad hoc, "as well as (involving) strategic shifts in education and training". It is also a strange irony, the employers organisation said, when there is much talk of labour market tightness, the numbers of long-term unemployed remain persistently high.

IBEC sees the difficulties in two particular areas. Record demand for high skilled employees requires significant shifts of recruitment emphasis and practice by business. At the same time, many employers attempting to fill relatively low skilled vacancies find themselves in competition with a combination of the social welfare, other support systems and the black economy.

However, while many businesses, both indigenous and foreign owned, are adapting to the new situation, IBEC argued that the Government must urgently address a range of issues.

It wants an early decision on an employer-led approach to training in its reassessment of the White Paper on human resources. Business is already showing a lead in the form of short-term initiatives designed to ease bottlenecks, IBEC stressed in its latest news letter out today.

"A unique opportunity to reduce the number of unemployed people over these boom years will be lost unless Government sharpens its approach to the problems."

The Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, ISME, has carried out a further survey. It showed that out of the 30 multinationals in the survey, only two had no labour or skill shortage, while 28 had. Out of the 69 small and medium sized firms, only 9 had no labour shortages, while 60 had.

Both the multinationals and the small and medium sized firms cited skill and labour shortages as the most important. ISME pointed to a number of multinationals which have job vacancies. ISME's 69 firms have vacancies for 241. It also quotes a letter from an IDA-backed company which complains about IDA criticism of the company's inability to fill the IDA job target. "I am sick of explaining and excusing myself to the IDA. . . I feel treated like a criminal instead of supported as an employer," the letter said.

ISME stressed it is time to bring the unemployed, the employers and the relevant State funded institutions together and charge them with devising a solution, within a given time frame "to ending the waste of human and capital resources, to end the spend thrift policies which have undermined the dignity of not a few and made dole cheats of many".