Fine Gael TD, Ms Olwyn Enright, has described public services like education as a Victorian theme park where even the actors would not put up with the conditions.
Benchmarking, if left unchallenged, will do nothing to redress the problem, she told the Business Studies Teachers' Association on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Ms Norah Martyn, president of the BSTA, demanded investment in lap-tops and other technology to tempt students back to business subjects. She wants to see second-level business courses equipped with data projectors, just as they are at third level.
While business studies was one of the most popular courses on the CAO list this year, at second-level the number of students taking accounting has dropped by half in the past decade.
Ms Enright echoed the concerns of the Economic and Social Research Institute, which warned last week that the payment of benchmarking awards to public servants next year could threaten the future of social partnership. Far from alienating public servants with its position, Fine Gael viewed public servants as taxpayers who would ultimately foot the bill for benchmarking.
"Many public servants say privately that they are frustrated with inefficiencies in the way their organisations work, and yet benchmarking does not deliver a reform agenda in any concrete way," Ms Enright said.