FAS should focus on training the employed - study

State training programmes should be "emphatically refocused" on people who have jobs rather than those who are out of work, a FÁS-commissioned study has suggested.

It claims that current policy places too much emphasis on unemployment and long-term unemployment - "problems that, for the present at least, have largely been solved".

The study, by economic consultant Mr Paul Tansey, says training should be clearly refocused on people who are at work.

"These are the people who can directly deliver productivity gains and enhanced output," it says.

It also calls for an increase in the volume, quality and relevance of workplace training as a means of increasing labour productivity.

The measure is one of several which Mr Tansey recommends if Ireland is to benefit from a pick- up in the world economy.

Even a revival in economic growth in the Republic's principal trading partners would not guarantee a similar improved performance here, he warns.

Mr Tansey identifies a sustained loss in cost and price competitiveness as the principal threat to the State's economic future.

The Republic's competitive position has been "seriously eroded" in recent times for a number of reasons, he argues.

These include rising consumer prices, earnings trends, the strength of the euro and a slowdown in labour productivity growth.

Against this background, Mr Tansey suggests, Irish goods and services will be progressively priced out of their markets.

Foreign direct investment could also weaken because of the increasing cost of doing business in the Republic and competition from new member states in the enlarged EU.

As well as refocusing training policy, he recommends as "essential" that 12.5 per cent corporation tax be retained, and that commitments to key infrastructural projects in the National Development Plan be maintained, "even in the face of pressure on the public finances".

He also recommends that enterprises, particularly SMEs, be advised that "two can train cheaper than one" and encouraged to co-operate on training programmes. And he said that more training for those in employment was an urgent requirement in the conditions the Irish economy operated in.