Lawyers buck the trend on salaries:The perception that Ireland's economic collapse has turned out to be a lawyer's bonanza got a major boost yesterday when Brightwater published its annual salary survey.
The general picture was one of cautious optimism and across the board increases of between 2 and 4 per cent in professions such as banking, accountancy, information technology, legal, human resources, office support and sales and marketing services.
Lawyers would seem to have done a little better with Brightwater noting: “In terms of salaries, it [2012] has been a critical year for firms who have been faced with issues concerning the retention of key staff.
“Firms have not been able to put off addressing salary freezes and accordingly we have witnessed salary increases of anything between 5 per cent to 15 per cent where increments have occurred.”
Not surprisingly the majority of “opportunities” have been in funds, commercial litigation, insolvency and regulatory. In a word: Nama.
In the real (non lawyer) Irish economy things remain tough, with rival recruitment firm Hay Group predicting in their annual pay review (also released yesterday) that wage growth in Ireland next year will be zero.
Pay in Europe as a whole will rise by an average 3.3 per cent in they say, led by the Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian economies where employees can expect an increase of 8 to 10 per cent.
Not bad unless you happen to work for a Dublin law firm.
Big Pharma isn't always to blame
Nobody denies there is a need for a reasoned debate on the issue of drug costs in Ireland. Regardless of some of the more hysterical figures bandied about, pharmaceutical costs here are clearly at the upper end of the spectrum.
However, in the continuing controversy over health budgets, efforts are being made to present an image of Big Pharma holding a metaphorical gun to the head of a craven Government.
Let’s get the position in focus. Nine of the top 10 pharma companies worldwide have chosen to have a significant presence in Ireland. As a group, they employ close to 25,000 people directly and many more in downstream activity. They are responsible for roughly half our exports – though, as a recent Davy report noted, raw materials for the sector knock a big hole in our import bill as well.
All this hasn’t happened because they like our cute freckles and blue eyes; IDA Ireland has been able to persuade these businesses that Ireland offers a business-friendly environment, with a low and stable rate of corporation tax and an educated population within the European Union.
Critically, another selling point in attracting foreign investment is ease of access to decision makers, including Government ministers.
So what has the pharmaceuticals sector being doing? Apparently little more than any other business sector – lobbying to further or protect its business interests and availing of the very access to ministers that has been a key element of our FDI programme.
And over what issue are they lobbying? Certainly, in recent negotiations that delivered a €400 million saving in the costs of current drugs, they were seeking the best outcome available to them. The net benefit to the State of that deal will be significantly reduced by the cost of new drugs.
But the particular focus of their lobbying in this instance was the Health Service Executive’s refusal to abide by agreements it had penned or was party to.
It had been agreed that drugs which have met regulatory requirements and had proven to be cost effective would be reimbursed by the HSE. The HSE, it appears, decided to renege on that accord when funds ran tight.
And bear in mind that phrase, “cost effective” – ie these new, albeit very expensive drugs, were a cheaper option that the healthcare costs of patients availing of other treatments.
Big pharma certainly needs to be held to account but so does the health service in general and it is not too hard to figure out which one has more work to do in this regard.
Booucher's bankers' bash an austere do
Word comes to us that Bank of Ireland chief executive Richie Boucher hosted a dinner recently at the bank’s head office on Mespil Road in Dublin for his fellow Irish bank chief executives.
It was described as a “straightforward working dinner” by someone who knew about the gathering and an opportunity for the bank bosses to review the issues the industry faced in 2012 and consider the lie of the land for next year.
The choice of Bank of Ireland is interesting all the same, given that it is the only domestic bank to have avoided Government control so you’d wonder whether the other banks could have hosted an event in their offices given their status as full or virtually nationalised entities.
Bank of Ireland is only 15 per cent State-owned but, despite the taxpayer’s limited shareholding, the dinner was said to be a relatively austere affair.
It wasn’t just the domestic banks in attendance; a number of the chief executives of the foreign-owned financial institutions also made it along to Boucher’s shindig.
Given the recent furore over banker pay and pensions, the bank bosses might have taken some comfort from wining and dining among their own.
It has been another tough year for the banks – the fifth of the crisis – dominated by further deleveraging of their non-core loan portfolios and their only starting to grasp the nettle of higher mortgage arrears.
Boucher’s bash might also have been an opportunity for the bankers to share a few thoughts on the motivation for banking regulator Fiona Muldoon to bash them publicly over their slow progress in rolling out long-term resolutions for the worst problem mortgages.
Given the still omnipresent pressure on bankers, a dinner within one of their own head offices was perhaps as far as they could go; it would have been difficult to run the public gauntlet and hold such an event outside one of the banks.
Number of the day:
€1.5bnNew shares placed by KBC bank to shore up its capital position as it pays back state aid to Belgium
Quote of the day:
I'm confident that they (the forthcoming elections)... will produce a coalition or a government that will be totally responsible...
Mario Monti on the upcoming Italian poll
Today:
The Economic and Social Research Institute will host a national conference on Work and Poverty
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