After the coming general election we will hopefully elect a new Government with a new focus, new energies and hopefully more ability.Those elected must immediately make many difficult, contentious and unpopular decisions. They must not shirk their responsibilities. We can all see the results of Bertie Ahern’s cowardly self serving keep everybody on-side at all costs. We are now paying a heavy price for his cowardice and greed. Amongst other things I believe the new Government must implement the following;
1 ) Hold tough against the ECB. The ECB support to the banks was given solely to protect the Eurozone and should be the responsibility of the entire Eurozone. We alone should not pay to save Europe. This was bank debt not public debt. Our share of the support funding must be at a reasonable interest rate. If not the ECB must be told that either the burden is shared and we get a reasonable interest rate or we will bring down the whole house of cards. It is either them or us, it really is that simple.
2 ) Electoral Reform. We must radically overhaul the political system including but not limited to the abolition of the Seanad. We must dispense with the clientelist system including a radical reduction in the number of TDs. 30 per cent of Dáil seats should come from a list system and local decision making should be further devolved to to a reformed local government. It is time we prohibited the election of pot hole fillers and phone box fixers to national parliament. We need a much smaller number of people of stature and ability. Legislators should not be spending their time arranging Mrs Murphy’s hip replacement.
3 ) Close NAMA. I have said this numerous times before in this column. NAMA was born from the same ludicrous economic philosophy that wants to get the public to absorb the debts of the banks only in this case it wants the public to absorb the debts of the developers. Our banks are now nationalised so we are holding the debts incurred by the developers anyhow so NAMA should be redundant.
4 ) More focus on job creation for indigenous industry. We will never recover from recession unless we develop coherent jobs strategy that also involves semi-skilled and manual workers. The smart economy is a myth. Ireland is nowhere close to developing a smart economy. Anyhow taken in isolation it cannot provide the employment boost that the country needs. So we must invest in immediate employment opportunities in such areas as the tourism sector, indigenous manufacturing, agriculture, as well as the services and traded sectors.
We should further encourage entrepreneurship and change our bankruptcy laws. They are too punitive. Experience is derived from failure and we are marginalising many experienced and capable people due to our dated bankruptcy laws. Likewise let the self employed enjoy the same social welfare and state benefits as everyone else. The current system is hugely unfair and discourages people from setting up in business.
More emphasis must be placed on developing indigenous Irish industry. We hear much about our multinational based export sector holding up and this is certainly a benefit to our economy. These businesses contribute much to our economy, they always leave eventually for the same reason they set up here in the first place. More favourable trading conditions in other locations. They repatriate their profits and hence the wealth generated by Irish workers in Irish industry is also exported. The long term future lies in the development of indigenous Irish industry so such bodies as Enterprise Ireland and the County Enterprise Boards need further resources and upodated terms of reference. They are the conduit to employment creation. They should be developed and given more resources.
5 ) Force through public sector reform. As promised but not delivered through the fairytale Croke Park agreement such reform must be forced through. This will inevitably involve conflict with the trade union movement. They have demonstrated their unwillingness to implement this agreement so they must be sidelined and reform implemented. Start with addressing the supernormal salaries for higher executives and you might get ‘buy in’ from the majority. This will require courage. It’s time to stand up and fight.
