NEW programme setting out Ireland's strategic objectives for the next IS years will be used as a framework for the next Programme for Competitiveness and Work, according to the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Bruton.
The Forfas report, Shaping Our Future, was launched by Mr Bruton yesterday. It says that new policy approaches could help to halve unemployment to 6 per cent over 15 years as well as raising living standards to the European norm.
To achieve these targets, the document makes a host of specific proposals covering areas ranging from unemployment and social welfare to education and taxation.
The detailed and comprehensive strategy document also looks in detail at what needs to be done to encourage the three main sectors of industry services, Irish owned industry and inward investment.
"The report has pointed up what can be achieved with political and social consensus and will be an extremely valuable backdrop or framework for the next PCW," Mr Bruton said. The 303 page report is a comprehensive look at how to develop the economy to its fullest capacity over the next 15 years.
Mr Bruton defended the potential cost of implementation. "It is not a shopping list with a price. The main value is not in setting out a shopping list but rather pointing to strategic choices," he said.
Mr Eoin Gahan, senior economist at Forfas, told The Irish Times that, if all measures were fully implemented, the cost in 2010 would be around £500 million at constant 1995 prices.
The plan, built up by a range of consultancy documents, cost £400,000 to compile, a task has taken almost two years.
It was commissioned by the then government in 1994 to outline a new programme for national recovery.
Mr John Travers, chief executive of Forfas, who as a senior civil servant was involved in the negotiation of the first national programme in the late 1980s, said the next PCW "needs a longer term framework".
He added that "issues like unemployment and taxation reform and infrastructural development cannot be developed in a short term period. The framework needs to be longer term, from 10 to 15 years, and this document will make an important contribution to that".
Mr Travers stressed that Mr Peter Brennan of IBEC had a strong input on the steering committee while Mr Peter Cassells, general secretary of ICTU, was a Forfas board member and thus "signed off" the document.
Mr Cassells welcomed the report. "It will make a major contribution to the formulation by the Government and the social partners of a longer term economic strategy to develop Ireland over the next decade as a modern, efficient, social market economy similar to other advanced European countries she said.
"Congress will respond positively to the challenge posed in the report of working with others to halve unemployment and modernise he Irish labour market", he added.
However, Mr Brian Geoghegan, director of economic affairs at IBEC, said it was "very early days" to talk about it being a framework. "We are still talking to our members about the whole issue of PCW and whether to be involved in negotiations", he said.
As well as providing a backdrop of the PCW talks, the proposals are expected to be taken on board by the various Government Departments and agencies involved.
Mr Bruton added that the report would "inform policy formation" in the coming years.
"Documents on enterprise, the services sector and human resources will be published in the coming months. Work on these papers has been and is being informed by Shaping Our Future," he said.
He added that the choices spelt out in the report were "perennial questions" facing any government.
"I don't believe it will be divisive," he added. "Each government will have a different agenda. This document is coming from an enterprise strategy perspective. All governments will have to look at it in context of other demands.
"Its strength is that it has a great deal to offer other areas, such as the reduction on unemployment."
