Senior business leaders have expressed serious concern over what they say is a raft of EU social legislation and the effect it is having on Ireland's ability to compete globally.

Mr Brendan McKenna, chief executive of Abbot Ireland Manufacturing Operations, which employs 1,600 people here, said that for multinationals the amount of directives emanating from the EU is the biggest single threat to continued employment and creating new jobs.

Speaking at an IMI debate on global competitiveness in Killarney at the weekend, he said the EU social directives were "totally and utterly" anti-competitive. "They are viewed with absolute distaste in the US corporate structure," he said.

"They are perceived not to contribute in any way to maintaining a job which is not competitively based or creating new jobs."

He cited examples such as legislation on the length of the working week and Works Councils. In his own organisation, which manufactures health care products, and is one of the largest employers in the North West, they had five sites, and were currently building a sixth. "Three sites are unionised, three are not, but we have three unions to deal with," he said.

He said if the Works Council legislation comes in, they will have to deal with six different Works Councils. "We will then have to appoint an Irish Works Council to deal with the six Works Councils," he said.

Mr McKenna said that it was prescribed medicine for dealing with your own employees and how you treat them. He said employees were not unhappy and none of them had asked for a 48 hour working week, or a 35 hour working week, above a normal working week. Nor had they asked for such legislation which, he said, was based on the era of the 1950s or 1960s.

Instead, he said, employees wanted a meaningful job which challenged them intellectually. He said his worry was that the EU legislators were drafting legislation based on the premise that the manufacturing and industrial base was going to remain static as it was in the 1970s and 1980s. "We are shifting at a very fast pace from a manufacturing base to an intellectual base in Europe," he said.

Mr McKenna said companies were seriously concerned about their ability to maintain their competitive edge. He said these concerns had been raised in Brussels, but EU legislators did not want to listen.

Mr Liam Cassidy managing director of Oral B Laboratories, also voiced concern. He said his company was a large multinational and could not compete on a cost basis alone with the likes of Indian or Asian companies. "But we can keep business here through our speed and agility," he said.

He said some of the current EU legislation was deeply worrying. He said there was some much administration involved in processing such legislation and this was a big worry for his company.

Earlier, the conference was told that it was vital for companies and their staff to move up the "technical ladder". Mr Percy Barnevik, the chairman of giant Swedish conglomerate ABB Group (which employs 600 people in Ireland) warned that companies that are labour intensive are doomed. Speaking on the IMI conference theme of competing in a global market, he said the move towards technology-based industries was not creating unemployment in itself, but was forcing a re-education of the workforce.

The conference also heard concerns from delegates at the rate of remuneration for those working in senior positions in the civil service. Several speakers from the floor emphasised the important role the semi-states play in developing the economy. They said senior public servants should be paid in line with their counterparts in the private sector

Mr Brian Patterson, chief executive of Waterford Wedgwood UK, said there was an element of begrudgery about paying people well in the public service. He said it was up to the private sector to push for better pay for senior public servants. He added that not only pay, but performance in the public sector should mirror best practice in the private sector.

They also asked if the public sector was suffering from a brain drain, with good personnel moving to the private sector.

Mr Paul Haran, Secretary General of the Department of Enterprise, Employment and Trade said remuneration was not a major constraining issue in attracting or retaining good staff. He stressed that the working environment in the civil service should be "enriching and liberating".

However, he said at chief executive level for semi-state companies it becomes a more acute issue. "The more traded the sector, perhaps the more acute it becomes."