THE LABOUR Party’s plan for enterprise and innovation has been criticised by Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton.
The enterprise spokesman said there was “a big void” in the Labour plan, which was published yesterday, as it ignored the main issues that were holding back the Irish economy and job creation.
“Poor national infrastructure, high business costs, unnecessary Government red tape and welfare traps are just some of the issues that are holding back job creation in the domestic economy,” Mr Bruton said.
“Unfortunately, Labour’s plan avoids all these serious issues and instead plumps for a strategy heavily based on State structures to drive new job creation.”
He said Labour proposed setting up 25 new structures, positions, taskforces and expert groups but they would not have any impact on job creation unless the underlying weaknesses in the economy were addressed first.
The Labour plan includes the establishment of a trade council, an innovation strategy agency and a network of technology research centres. It also aims to set up trade and investment teams in the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The strategy involves ring-fencing €500 million for a range of initiatives designed to get people off the Live Register and back to work.
“Labour places all its faith in raising €500 million for a vague ‘jobs fund’ that will see politicians and State agencies seeking to influence for their own agendas,” Mr Bruton said.
“It is not clear if this ‘jobs fund’ would even yield a return for taxpayers. The real challenge is to be smarter with the money we already have and to tackle problems within government control.”
Mr Bruton said Fine Gael would soon unveil its own plans for job creation and enterprise growth.
“Fine Gael in government will drive the changes to allow people and businesses to create the jobs the country badly needs,” he said.
“We will soon outline in detail how we plan to foster new demand in the domestic economy, invest in badly needed modern infrastructure, lower business costs, open up sheltered sectors of the economy to competition, target youth unemployment and reform the way the public service interacts with business.”
