State sought OECD report changes

The Government sought to make a number of changes to the conclusions of the recent review of the Irish economy by the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that several Government departments raised concerns abouts about elements of the report after seeing a draft copy.

The report was critical of the management of Government finances and the need for better control and prioritisation of public spending. It also flagged a number of problems such as the impact of the public sector pay benchmarking process on the national finances. It also called for the re-introduction of third-level fees along with a broadening of the tax base through measures such as water charges and residential property taxes.

Documents detailing the issues raised were withheld but the contentious areas were identified in correspondence.

Not surprisingly the the Department of Finance sought the bulk of the amendments, but no details were released. The Department declined to comment further on the documents this week.

The Department of Enterprise and Employment seems to have been unhappy with criticism in the draft that regulatory reform was "sluggish" in areas such as pubs, legal and other profession including pharmacies.

It provided the Department of Finance with a briefing document on the subject for a meeting in Paris with the OECD at which the draft report was reviewed. Such reviews are standard practice with all OECD country reports and any lobbying by Irish officials would not appear to have borne fruit as the criticism was retained in the final version of the report.

The Department also appears to have been sensitive to criticism over the large number of people on training schemes, back-to-work schemes and other programmes for the unemployed. Again, a detailed commentary on the draft was prepared by the Department, although it did not stop the OECD warning the in the final draft that the "effectiveness and efficiency of such measures needs to be checked closely".

Enterprise and Employment was also concerned about comments from the Spanish delegation to the OECD that Ireland was overly reliant or focuses on foreign direct investment. It forwarded a document from IDA Ireland rebutting the comments.

The demanding, by national governments, of amendments to its drafts reports has become a sensitive subject for the OECD since it emerged last May that its report on Germany was significantly altered at the request of the German government.

According to an unnamed OECD official quoted in the German financial paper, Handelsblatt the report was softened "in a way I've never experienced in the past".

A comment that "It is inconceivable the budget can be balanced in the short term" was changed to "the Federal government has committed itself to a policy of strong budgetary consolidation and is currently tied into a consolidation package".