Fine Gael’s ‘Five Point Plan’ for Ireland, will get the country “back on track” and “working again” according to the party’s Galway West candidate, councillor Hildegarde Naughton.
The plan was announced this week and its headline points are: Redirect tax reliefs into the SME sector; examine the case for removing upward only rent reviews; partial loan guarantee for viable small businesses; cutting red tape by 25 per cent; a jobs tax cut to reduce staff costs for employers; make it easier for SMEs to tender for public contracts.
Cllr Naughton said the plan is about “protecting and creating jobs, keeping taxes low, creating a completely new health system, making government smaller and better, and reforming the political system”.
Cllr Naughton believes that keeping taxes low and supporting small and medium businesses is key to job creation and she is concerned by proposals from other parties that income taxes should be raised. This, she said, will “only serve to remove” the incentive to work.
“Over that past few days as I have been out on the canvass the issue of jobs is a real priority for the people of Galway,” she said. “In particular meeting young people there is a very real concern that when they finish school or college that they will have no option but to leave Ireland.”
She feels that implementing the plan will give “at least some hope and support for jobs in the future”.
