Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

In the past 24 hours we have heard much from the Government side about the ESRI report. If I were a construction worker or a manufacturing worker who had lost his job in the past three months, the ESRI report would not mean a whole pile to me. I would not be able to bring home the ESRI report on Thursday evening instead of a cheque and put it on the table to feed my family. The Government has engaged in a degree of spin on the issue in the past 24 hours. There is a state of denial on this issue.

The Labour Party seeks to lobby the Government to examine this issue positively, take in hand certain aspects of the economy and re-jig its thinking on how to work our way out of the downturn, notwithstanding the potential long-term gains as outlined in the ESRI report. To arrest the decline in the construction industry the Government must come out in favour of infrastructural spending. It is not sufficient that the NRA and other agencies concentrate spending on interurban or intercity projects. The NRA must be adequately funded to develop road networks between towns, especially for secondary roads that are not better, in some instances, than boreens. If regional development, which should be a main plank of a country such as this, is to mean anything, then the national spatial strategy must be returned to the forefront of economic thinking. A typical hub town such as Mallow must benefit from Government policy that delivers infrastructure, as should towns such as Cobh, Youghal, Midleton and Fermoy. These towns have not benefitted from the boom except in the area of construction. Investment in the infrastructure of road networks, business and enterprise parks will encourage local economic growth.

The Government must also find ways to take a punt on innovation. Given that we have €8 billion invested in property overseas we must find ways to claw this back and encourage those who invest in bricks and mortar overseas to take a chance on the commercialisation of technology. We must support venture capital and divert investment in bricks and mortar to innovation. On his website David McWilliams states that out of every €1 we borrowed in 2007, 86 cent went into property. Speculative investment in property, unlike other investment, creates no added value, no products, exports, patents, no skills and no basis for future national wealth. The Government's recent announcement of €500 million funding is welcome but it must go further given the recent downturn we have encountered. Enterprise Ireland's €60 million growth fund to support Ireland's small and medium sized companies is minuscule given the potential in this sector. The cost base to small local family owned firms, through massive local authority charges, is a testament to the contempt in which this Government holds local authorities. Properly funded local authorities would mean fewer charges for business and more output locally. There must be a paradigm shift in thinking towards taking the burden of charges away from small businesses. For too long they have been a soft focus for the Government in terms of overcharging.

The local economy will be the key to our future. This, along with entrepreneurial endeavour through knowledge, will sustain us. I call on the Government to acknowledge the potential for venture capital and greater investment in the millions of ideas outside these walls, waiting to come to fruition. For this to take hold, the Government must become an active stakeholder in the process. Section 23 type tax breaks that fuelled construction must now apply to the venture capital sphere, which fuels ideas, where the risks are higher but the potential for the economy in the long run is greater.

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