It's one thing to warn about the dangers of wage inflation on the putative Celtic Tiger but quite another to urge employers not to adopt a growth strategy or to employ people to implement one as the sheltered denizens of the Economic and Social Research Institute discovered this week.

Mind you, their latest quarterly commentary did achieve something even the partnership approach to national agreements has struggled to do in recent years - bring the employers and the unions together to speak with one voice in opposition to the ESRI's views.