http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO3S0Du95ps

FIANNA FÁIL LEADER Micheál Martin believes that social partnership wasn’t the right mechanism for the period of economic boom in Ireland.

Martin said that there were a number of mistakes made by the Fianna Fáil administration during its 14 years in office.

These including too much government expenditure, reduction in taxation and lack of political oversight of the regulatory system.

He was speaking at Leinster House yesterday when he was asked about his views on social partnership – the tripartite, triennial national pay agreements the government hammered out with business and labour between 1987 and 2005.

“I don’t think during the boom period, that it was equipped or the right mechanism to deal with the issues that arose then,” he said.

Earlier, Martin had told Today with Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio 1 that former taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s “greatest mistake” was his faith in the social partnership process which he had instigated as Minister for Labour during the economic downturn of the late 80s.

Watch more in the video above.

Micheál Martin: ‘I do feel a certain degree of guilt over Magdalene Laundries’

Column: Public sector increments are like a parallel universe

Previously: Report to blame social partnership for country’s financial woes