It is far from clear that the pound is a suitable currency for all of the United Kingdom or that the euro poses the same problems for Milan as it does for Naples or for Barcelona and Extra Madura or that the Mark was an appropriate currency for both East and West Germany.

Of course the same arguments could be used to justify the gold standard but the steps needed to accomodate the euro are mostly desirable. Whinging about the euro is just natural for governments running out of excuses for not grasping nettles.

Lowest unemployment in the Euro zone second highest minimum wage in europe can’t be all bad.

Try: OECD Factbook 2006, for Total Tax Revenues as a Percentage of GDP, and Taxes on the Average Production Worker:
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/pdf/fact2006pdf/09-03-01.pdf
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/pdf/fact2006pdf/09-03-02.pdf

As for FDI:
http://miranda.sourceoecd.org/pdf/fact2006pdf/11-02-01.pdf

The downside for Ireland of being in the Eurozone is the loss of national monetary autonomy. The low interest rates set by the European Central Bank to curb the average inflation rate across the whole Eurozone have resulted in a house price bubble in Ireland. Britain has a house price bubble despite the much higher interest rates set by the Bank of England. Being in the Eurozone would have exacerbated the problem.

The conclusions in a recent OECD study on house prices:

“The literature reviewed for this study was confined to recent research. It suggests that prices are broadly in line with what were identified as their main determinants in Denmark, Finland, France, the United States and Norway. The findings are mixed for the Netherlands. However, they uniformly point to significant overvaluation in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain.”
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/56/35756053.pdf

The risk inherent in house price bubbles is the possibility of a downstream crash and the consequential instability that the crash would bring.

“More than 150 German economics professors have called for an ‘orderly postponement’ of economic and monetary union because economic conditions in Europe are ‘most unsuitable’ for the project to start.

“The call to delay Emu ‘for a couple of years’ is made in a declaration signed by 155 university professors and sent to the Financial Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in Germany. It signals intensified opposition to the government’s euro policy.

“The declaration was organised by Manfred Neumann, professor of economic policy at Bonn university and chairman of the Bonn economics ministry’s council of expert advisers. It signals concern among professional economists about Bonn’s determination to begin the single currency on January 1 1999. . . ”
http://www.internetional.se/9802brdpr.htm

Of course, such a non-conformist assessment was unacceptable although, in retrospect, Jacques Delors seems to have agreed with the substance of it in an interview with The Times at the beginning of 2004:

“JACQUES DELORS, the former President of the European Commission, fuelled the controversy over the euro yesterday by admitting that Britain was justified in opting out of the single currency because its launch was flawed.

“In a remarkably frank interview with The Times, the one-time bogeyman of Eurosceptics also predicted that Britain would stay out for years, not least because Gordon Brown was so ‘passionate about his contempt for Europe’.

“In another startling admission, the veteran French leftwinger said that the European Union was in a ’state of latent crisis’ because of weak leadership. He blamed member state leaders, including President Chirac of France, for putting national interests before the common good.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,740-967150,00.html

Vive La Reine!