A "radical change of thinking" in the way government departments draw up plans and allocate funding is required if prosperity is to be spread to disadvantaged areas, the chairman of the Donegal Employment Initiative Task Force said yesterday.
Mr Michael McLoone, who is also Donegal County Manager, was speaking after presenting the report of the task force, which was set up by the Tanaiste last September to find ways to offset more than 700 job losses at Fruit of the Loom clothing plants.
Mr McLoone said there was a need for all economic planning in the future to include regional and county targets. "It hasn't been traditional here since we started economic development planning to disaggregate national targets down to regional and county levels," he said. This would be a complete shift in thinking, but it was the only way to plan, monitor and modify.
He added: "Otherwise you are doing it all at gross level so you are looking at national economic performance, and that does nothing for the spread, or for modifying national policies to try to promote growth in particular areas that are lagging behind. . ."
The report, which runs to 260 pages, recommends a seven-year development strategy for the county and covers all the different economic sectors.
Over this period, it calls for an allocation of £732 million from the Government to pay for the investment priorities recommended. This would amount to about 4 per cent of the Government's Public Capital Programme during this period, and Mr McLoone said this was reasonable given that Donegal has 3.6 per cent of the State's population.
The report is subtitled "A response to 1,000-plus job losses" and Mr McLoone said the county could expect further lay-offs in traditional sectors such as textiles.
Given also that unemployment was much higher than the national average, at more than 20 per cent, Mr McLoone said, the task force had recommended a target of 9,950 new jobs by 2006. This was seen as "very ambitious and unrealistic" by some of the development agencies but the task force believed this was what was needed.
The report or action plan is based on a model used by the Western Development Commission in its recent Blueprint for Success report on the seven western counties, and outlines in great detail the existing problems in the county and the priorities for future spending.
Mr McLoone said the plan and its objectives should be incorporated into the National Development Plan, which is currently being drawn up. It would, therefore, be seen quite soon if the recommendations were being taken up.
He said funding should be earmarked in the national plan and it should also include "explicit policy-making", with details of differentiated incentives for industrial development in different parts of the State.
"Donegal should be able to offer higher financial incentives than any other county in Ireland except those lagging as far behind," he said.
He was encouraged by the response from the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, who was given the report earlier this month, and he was optimistic that it would be implemented.
In a statement, Ms Harney said the Government had decided that all relevant departments should examine the report and consider the investment priorities it proposed in drafting the operational programmes of the National Development Plan.
She said a start had been made on delivering new enterprises to Donegal, but that there was still very significant work to be done.