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Policies on Poverty, Exclusion and Inequalityunexpected. Higher productivity on the part of a slowly growingnumber of people in employment had described Ireland’s pattern ofeconomic growth from 1960 to 1993. During the 1980s, the Irishservices sector had generated fewer jobs in relation to its GNP bycomparison with other OECD countries (NESC, 1993b; Tansey,1998). It is now clear that, in addition to high economic growth, ittook the cumulative impact of lower taxes (particularly on lowearnings), improved incentives for welfare recipients, wagemoderation, the erosion of anti-competitive practices and, ingeneral, an improved environment for small and medium-sizedenterprises to allow low-productivity service jobs to expandalongside their high-productivity counterparts to the extent that theydid. The Council believes that the social partnership processdeveloped since 1987 played an important role in facilitating thesechanges and allowing Ireland’s economic growth to become morelabour intensive.Turning to international experience, the Council notes the differentapproaches that countries have taken towards low skilled jobs andtheir role in helping achieve social inclusion (see Box 8.2)BOX 8.2 7Different Approaches to Low Skilled JobsA Scandinavian approach has relied principally on recruitingrelatively low skilled workers to expand public services, such aschildcare at municipal level, to meet the new needs of householdsarising from high employment rates and the diminishedtime budget of both men and women for caring and houseworkgenerally. The services are funded from general taxation. Fromone viewpoint, this approach is simply moving activities fromthe informal into the formal economy but, in the process,impressively high employment rates for low-skilled and olderworkers, and extremely low gender differentials in earnings,were achieved. The approach, therefore, considerably abetted7. The summary in the box is drawn from several sources. For a major, in-depthreview, see Scharpf and Schmidt (2000).393