Last week's report by the National Competitiveness Council (NCC), entitled 'Ireland's Competitiveness Challenge', is the case in point. The new document sets a formidable task of addressing key challenges in our economic policy:

improving cost competitiveness, developing a knowledgeintensive workforce and delivering a competitivelypriced and secure supply of energy.

We've heard this all so many times that the NCC report makes one wonder:

do our wise policy men truly believe that the path to enlightenment lies in endless repetition of the facile? How many times can one hear that "we have lost international price competitiveness because of domestic price inflation and exchange rate movements"? As if we do not share an exchange rate with 14 other countries, or inflation in the countries to which we are losing business runs at a slower pace.

How long will it take NCC to admit that the real source of high inflation here is the rampant price hikes in our state-controlled sectors?

NCC is laudable in calling for the government to publish recommendations for the removal of restrictions to competition in the domestic sectors.

The only problem is that asking the government departments to do this is like appointing a fox to guard chickens.

Over recent years, these departments - from health to transport to cultural affairs - have made it their core business to protect state monopolies and interest groups from any pressure to reform.

"We need a determined plan to reduce the growing electricity price differential between Ireland and the EU, " says NCC, and recommends that we use the National Development Plan "to support national security of supply of electricity". Full stop.

Another bold call for policy challenge turns to a whimper at the feet of the state-owned monopolies responsible for our sky-high energy prices.

See no evil, hear no evil is the name of the game. It is as if the whole NCC report was written months before the NDP was launched and then held back by some bureaucratic fiat until last week.

Being late to the market is nothing new in the warped time-space continuum of the quangos.

According to NCC, "In a small regional economy like Ireland, economic prosperity ultimately depends on our ability to sell goods and services abroad".

Years after Ryanair, CRH, IAWS, Independent News and Media and many more Irish corporations and a score of our brightest entrepreneurs have gone multinational and diversified outside Ireland, NCC comes up with a bold suggestion that trading globally may be a viable business idea.

After dispensing this invaluable advice, NCC turns its attention to affairs of state. According to the report, "Irish public services compare well to those in other countries.

However, across all OECD economies, public sector productivity levels and growth rates remain low by economy wide measures."

Well done, lads. Our bureaucrats and public sector workers may be costing us tens of billions, they may shift onto the private sector full liability for their pensions and perks, they may be delivering less services at a greater cost. Relax - they are only as bad as their colleagues in other countries.

One can make two possible assessments of public service efficiency.

The first is based on frequency and quality of service per euro spent by the consumer, and the second is based on benchmarking publiclyprovided services against those provided by competing private suppliers.

The first comparison is an absolute measure of value for money; the second is a relative one. Neither NCC nor any other government body has ever engaged in a comprehensive assessment of either one of these measures.

The real irony is that our state-monopolised services in health, waste collection, urban and rural planning, utilities, police and public transport - virtually all state-supplied and regulated services - are non-transparent when it comes to value-for-money assessment and inefficient when it comes to direct competition with private sector providers.

NCC may be keen on producing macro-figures on the efficiency of public spending, but this is about as esoteric as a Nasa scientist talking of life on Mars. When it comes to real life - perpetually offschedule Dublin Bus, CIE and DAA employees refusing to accept new technology, ESB's Poolbeg workers producing no electricity while collecting four times the average industrial wage, a monopoly-captured regulator who openly declares his love to the state-owned energy behemoths, hospital staff routinely holding the country hostage in pay talks - NCC is off the ball.

It may be true that in other countries the public sector is as avaricious and opaque as ours, but it is of little consolation to an average taxpayer who pays for this extortion.

NCC is an able and wellintentioned body that sets as its objective an important task to promote this country's competitiveness. The real question that begs asking after reading this latest report is: why do our smart policy men chase the windmill villains in a world full of real monopolies and state bodies resisting reform? Perhaps NCC's next report should start with this simple but promising question.

Dr Constantin Gurdgiev is an economist and editor of Business & Finance magazine www. businessand"nance. ie