Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 9 July 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Action Plan for Jobs 2013: Discussion with Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

2:20 pm

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and hope he enjoyed his visit to Waterford and the very sunny south east yesterday. The previous speaker said some of the contributions had a political context to them. I do not think we should apologise for this because we have to be honest about where we are. The jobs crisis is still the single biggest issue facing the people. We still have far too many out of work and far too many young people who are emigrating. While the Minister is very busy, the benchmark on which I will judge him and the Government is not the high standard that I set for myself. My standards would be higher than those of the Minister, as is my ambition of where we need to be, but we are benchmarking the Government's performance on the targets the Minister set such as creating 100,000 net jobs and others that simply have not been met. That is a fair assessment of where we are. We have a job to do to represent the people we represent at meetings such as this. If people think that is political, fair enough, but that is our job. One of the Minister's targets was to attract 50% of foreign direct investment to locations outside Cork and Dublin. Unfortunately, that has not happened and is one of the targets that has not been reached.

One of the issues that comes up in some regions - the south east has the highest unemployment rate - is the grant aid available to companies. The BMW region has a more favourable grant aid figure than the south east, in spite of its higher unemployment rate. Can this issue be examined? We need to look at regional disparities in foreign direct investment. One of the previous speakers spoke about site visits and how some regions and counties simply had not received the level of support they needed from IDA Ireland. When IDA Ireland has tried to attract foreign direct investment to some regions and counties, there has often been a lack of property solutions. Again, that is where the Minister needs to have a joined-up approach. He spoke about collaboration between Departments. We need collaboration between local authorities to make sure we can make these property solutions available. We need to attract foreign direct investment across the State to ensure balanced regional development and to ensure this we need property solutions. We could then develop clusters in some sectors.

I recognise that the Government is doing a lot of good work, but there are opportunities in three sectors, the first of which is agriculture. It is important that there be a joined-up approach and that we do not have a silo mentality or approach as we adopted in the past with previous Governments. Agriculture provides great job opportunities. We have the abolition of the milk quotas and the Harvest 2020 targets to achieve. If we want jobs to be created in the sector, we will have to look at providing employment supports, as well as banking support, for farmers if they want to increase production. If this is a key growth sector, what measures is the Department putting in place to ensure we achieve these targets to create the necessary jobs?

The life sciences and medical devices sector was mentioned. The expiry of patents is one problem the sector faces, but there are also challenges in terms of the cost of research and development. Global over-capacity is also a problem, as well as competition from Asia.

As the life sciences and medical device sectors continues to offer significant opportunities, what holistic strategy is in place to combat and deal with these challenges? We need to recognise and overcome these challenges and then make sure we exploit the available opportunities. Aside from the expiry of patents, there is the issue of research and development. In this regard, we need to co-ordinate the work of the institutes of technology and the universities.

I refer to the tourism sector. The Gathering is an important event which is good and great for the country. It has obviously boosted tourist numbers. Many regions of the country regard tourism as a key driver of job creation and the local economy. What initiatives are being considered by the Minister and his Department? This might be regarded as the responsibility of the Ministers with responsibility for tourism and agriculture, but I am looking at it from a job creation perspective, which is the responsibility of the Minister's Department.

We need to support SMEs. Commercial rates are an issue in my own county of Waterford. The Government is looking to move towards self-assessment, but many small and medium-sized businesses have been hit with a doubling and a trebling of their rates because of the rates revaluation. This has caused significant problems. It is an antiquated system of calculating rates which needs to be modernised. The burden must be shifted from small to medium-sized businesses onto larger companies in order to give them a break. I ask for the Minister's views on this issue.

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