Labour’s Enterprise, Innovation and Growth Policy certainly will not give hope to those on the dole queues or those on emigrant flights. It is a big disappointment and tends to reinforce the view that Labour has a strong capacity for rhetoric and an aversion to substance.
The two most concrete proposals are for a 500 million jobs fund and for a Strategic Investment Bank. The former is a paltry amount. Even if the 500 million was managed as strategically as possible to have maximum jobs impact, it would create a maximum of 5,000 jobs. This is even an assumption, as Labour’s document doesn’t specifically detail how each slice of this 500 million would be apportioned to different sectors or give any figures for potential jobs to be created in each.
The document makes a laudable commitment to increase the indigenous share of exports in both manufacturing and international services from 11.6 to 15% in the former and 6 to 10% the latter. However, this is left hanging .It is assumed that somehow, a catchall approach involving the establishment of Technological Research Centres (TRCs); an Innovation Strategy Agency (ISA) and a broad optimistic discussion of growth sectors in the economy will deliver this outcome. Talk does not deliver jobs.
The establishment of a ‘Trade Council’ to visit what Labour call the ‘BRIC’ countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is just a new name for a process that has been happening for years. Similarly, Labour is just merging Forfas with a whole raft of other enterprise and innovation agencies and re-branding it the ISA. We are not told what economic and employments benefits inform this move.
Labour does make an astute observation that ‘there is a critical gap between the basic research promoted and funded by SFI/universities and its development into commercially viable propositions that will attract venture capital investment from either the private sector or Enterprise Ireland’.
However, its plan is to set up the TRCs who ‘over time’ will be expected to supplement their core state research funding and will be set up in technology parks such as Tyndall in Cork. This is nothing new. There is no worked out plan as to how these companies can be spun out to the marketplace to create jobs.
Of course, it is not surprising that there is no mention of how many jobs might be created. This is consistent with the fact that Labour will only spend 500 million and this will come from the exchequer.
In fact there are no employment projections whatsoever in this document. One would expect that in an enterprise policy which contains a plan to invest in the economy through a Strategic Investment Bank and a ‘jobs fund of 500m’, we might be told how many jobs will be created and when. There are no such details.
The document describes its ‘Strategic Approach to Key Sectors’ which it identifies as: Clean Technology; Creative Industries; Education; Internet Services/Cloud-Computing; Food; Tourism; Retail Sector. It proposes to establish: a ‘renewable manufacturing hub’ to attract investment Foreign and Irish companies; the renewal of an R+D tax credit for the gaming industry; another expert group on cloud computing; ‘a focus’ on exporting education and an ‘improved understanding’ of its potential; yet another taskforce on the dairy sector; the abolition of upward rent reviews and a ‘tourism marketing fund’.
This is clearly just talk and taskforces. There is no Strategy. There is no mention of how many jobs or hardly even a mention of jobs at all that will attach to these. The reason is obvious. Firstly, the whole strategy is un-worked out. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, there is very little money committed to doing anything despite its mention of ‘the scaling up of public money from the National Pension Reserve Fund’ (NPRF).
However, Labour’s taking of 500 million from the exchequer for its plan shows that it has no intention of going to the NPRF, which is why its jobs fund is so paltry. No doubt, this is because Labour is committed to funding the EU/IMF deal which takes 17.5 billion from the NPRF and the government’s cash reserves held by the National Treasury Management Agency to go to the banks. Labour clearly believe there will not be enough left for jobs.
This lays bare Labour’s priority of putting banks before jobs and its consequent failure to put the economy on a growth trajectory. Labour’s policy on jobs is also bereft of practicalities and is vague in the extreme. It’s a thorough disappointment from a Party that has promised so much.
