Madam, – Readers can see from Siptu’s earnings study (www.siptu.ie/PressRoom/ TheEconomy/) that, contrary to the impression given by your report (Finance, December 1st) and ESRI director Frances Ruane’s response (December 4th), I did not include the ESRI among those commentators engaged in “deliberate misrepresentation” of earnings data.
Indeed, I specifically exonerated the ESRI from having any responsibility for the hysterical “50 per cent” headlines that have featured in some media campaigns regarding the supposed size of the public sector premium. I did, however, take issue with the methodological dogmatism of the ESRI in arriving at its “26 per cent” premium conclusions.
When reference is made to the very different mandates of SIPTU and the ESRI, I do not, of course, object to being accused of working in the interests of our 200,000 members to produce a study of decade-long earnings data showing that the principal divide that has emerged is between the top and lower ends of the private sector itself.
Had Siptu been alone in criticising the ESRI methodology, it might be easy to get away with the suggestion that, representing an interest in society, we would say that anyway.
The problem for the ESRI is that it has also been subject to a parallel but similar critique by UCD Professor John Geary and Oxford University economist Dr Anthony Murphy. Perhaps the most significant critique of the use made by the ESRI of CSO data has come from within the CSO itself.
In their November 5th paper on the public-private wage gap, Patrick Foley and Fiona O’Callaghan make the point that “any type of regression or related analysis that attempts to directly compare earnings across the public and private sector is prone to oversimplification”. They produce a set of tables which show that, depending on the criteria included or excluded, the premium could be taken to be at any one of several points between 7 and 20 per cent.
The CSO authors advise “caution in attempting to estimate a single definitive ‘answer’ for the average public-private sector wage gap” and suggest that “a range, while not clear-cut, might provide a more accurate picture”.
Such a particularly responsible intervention in the debate has, unfortunately, not met with the attention it deserves. – Yours, etc,