The Ibec monkeys turn tail
Sunday August 20 2006
The latest Ibec accounts are now lodged. The figures are ominous.
They reveal that income from subscriptions fell at Ibec last year. Profits halved.
Quite an achievement for a business body, slap in the middle of the fastest economic boom ever.
Not only was Ibec's income down. Its expenditure was up. Ouch.
Ibec has done the double. Now its monkeys have begun to develop human brains. Could the monkeys be musing over the value of their annual subs?
Apart from the headline figures, the big-business group's returns coyly reveal no details of the source of its €9.5m annual income. So, let us help it.
A few weeks ago, when the latest trade union-dictated pay deal was cooked up between Ictu and Ibec, one of the monkeys rang.
He fulminated: "What in God's name are you going to do about this monstrous agreement? You senators sit on your arses and nod these concoctions through. It will cost us a fortune. And it will be the death knell of competitiveness."
"Are you a member of Ibec?" I interrupted.
"For my sins," he replied .
"And how much do you pay for membership?"
He confessed to regularly asking himself why he wrote the annual cheque.
So I decided to re-investigate the identity of the string pullers at Ibec, the pay-deal puppets.
The figures remain astonishing. They confirm without question that the big banks and semi-states call the tune at Ibec. The cannon fodder are the monkeys - real businesses.
Top of the paymasters come the three biggest banks - AIB, Bank of Ireland and Ulster. All pay an identical amount. Each forks out an uncannily similar €180,000 a year to keep the club under its influence.
Ibec pretends that the annual sub is worked out on the basis of the number of employees. Funny that. AIB employs 23,000 people (10,000 in the Republic of Ireland), BoI has 16,000 (8,000 in the Republic) and Ulster a mere 5,400.
So how come they all pay the same fee? Well, er, cartels always share the burden in a comradely way.
And they keep the club afloat.
The banks are well-supported by the other pillar of social partnership, the semi-states.
Semi-states pony up without question. It is, after all, taxpayers' money. So it doesn't matter.
The great monopolies head the semi-state posse. An Post, the most troubled of the invalids, pays the most, with an annual levy of €123,000.
The DAA (which, totally coincidentally, is chaired by Gary McGann, the last Ibec president) is joint runner-up, with a phenomenally generous €120,000 - a sum equalled only by another state monopoly - the ESB - whose shareholder (the State) also coughs up €120,000.
RTE gives the boys €90,000. Bord na Mona stumps up €75,000. An Bord Gais coughs up €63,000 and Coillte sheds €60,000. Every one an offspring of a monopoly.
Chairman John Lynch of the crippled CIE seems to have extracted a special discount deal. It pays only €27,000 to the partnership poodles, despite its vast workforce.
Ibec does not want the world to know it does special deals - which it does; the flow of departures might turn into a flood. So CIE is playing the game and keeping mum.
Other companies reluctant to reveal the size of their subs have uncomfortably close links with Ibec itself. The most obvious are C&C and the Bank of Scotland.
Link one: the secretive C&C is chaired by Ibec treasurer Tony O'Brien. When I was on the Ibec funds trail, the normally friendly Tony went missing. Funny that.
Link two: C&C also just happens to be managed by the suddenly silent Maurice the Pratt. And guess who is a former president of the Ibec monkeys' prison? Yes, M the P took the Ibec route a few years ago. Such a road is often a good career path to the board of a bank.
And link three: guess who succeeded Phil Flynn in the chair of the Bank of Scotland? None other than Maurice, today's prototype of Ibecman.
And which is the only Irish bank to refuse to reveal its Ibec sub to the world? None other than Maurice's Bank of Scotland. Ahem.
Maurice remains a trustee. He has really bought into the joining business. So has the Bank of Scotland, now propping up Ibec, just as it slips silently into the cartel.
Greencore is another to keep quiet about its dues to Ibec. Coincidentally its boss, David Dilger, is an Ibec trustee!
There are a few gallant refuseniks. These are mostly the pioneers who run real businesses, operations that compete.
Ryanair's Michael O'Leary has a healthy contempt for Ibec. He will not touch them. He regards them as an obstruction to putting bums on seats.
Paddy Power's brilliant young Patrick Kennedy has kept clear of the same contamination. So did his predecessor at one of the great success stories of Irish business.
Banks do not compete. State monopolies do not compete. The non-competitive element of the Irish economy loves Ibec. Entrepreneurs steer clear.
The Government should be worried. While Ibec remain its tame poodle in all pay deals due to the semi-state funding, it should listen to the warnings of the US Chamber of Commerce just one month ago.
In a thinly veiled attack on Ibec, the vibrant US companies took a swipe at the pay deal, insisting that some of their members could not afford it. What is more, they highlighted the dangers of losing competitiveness, now an amber light for the end of the boom.
Our recent inflation figures have confirmed their forebodings.
If we lost the US Chamber of Commerce, business would be left in the dark abyss of Ibec. And in an economic wilderness.
A rumour is doing the rounds that Jim O'Hara of US multinational Intel is mulling over the prospect of forming a group to compete with Ibec.
The monkeys would rally to his banner. There would be no more pay deals, higher salaries and plenty of share options. There would be no absurd union-induced disputes or bearded wonders dictating pay terms to gutless government gofers.
- Shane Ross
