The Irish Business and Employers confederation (IBEC) has said that new EU member states should not take membership as a guarantee of economic and social progress.

Speaking in Zagreb yesterday, IBEC's director of enterprise, Mr Brendan Butler, said that the potential benefits of EU membership will only be realised if they are underpinned by strong national policies.

"The poor domestic policies in Ireland during the first 15 years of our EU membership confirm this," he said.

Mr Butler, who was addressing a major international conference dealing with the benefits of EU membership, stressed that Ireland's economic success was the result of a range of policy decisions and actions, many of which were not directly related to EU membership.

Factors which had underpinned Ireland's economic success include, EU transfer payments, wider trading opportunities, the Maastricht criteria, which imposed discipline in relation to the public finances and also European Monetary Union.

"The EU factors, while critical, were of themselves not sufficient to drive the Irish economy forward.

"Other issues played a crucial role and these included our low taxation regime, a young well-educated workforce, our social partnership process and an ability to attract foreign direct investment," Mr Butler said.

"In the past 15 years, more than 600,000 additional jobs have been created and many of our social problems has been eliminated.

This progress has been achieved through a combination of strong national policies and benefits derived from EU membership," he said.