Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

I refer to the part of the motion dealing with job creation. There is a good deal of discussion about entrepreneurship. Often the role models put forward are of people singled out based on their ability to make a quick buck. There are examples of people who have set up companies. I do not mean to single out the public relations industry but there have been such examples in the area of providing public relations services. There are examples of people who set up a company, sell it some years later and make millions. There is an element of the bubble in this model of entrepreneurship. The creation of jobs in future must involve entrepreneurship that is not only about business people making a quick buck using the latest trends, but which is linked with innovation, science, technology, engineering and the arts and humanities.

A Nobel prize winner in physics this year was educated in a polytechnic college in the UK in the 1960s. Basically, he invented fibre optic cabling which is what our mobile phones are based on. This was the invention of someone educated in the equivalent of our institutes of technology. It has changed the face of modern communications, made our lives easier and made it easier to keep in touch with people. This is the type of area Ireland should develop in future and on which our vision of job creation should be based. We should produce and educate such graduates and invest in the education of science, technology, the arts and humanities and so on. Obviously, business should be included in this plan as well but we must consider the bigger picture which involves all these people working together to create jobs. It is not simply a matter of business people, business graduates and so on.

Entrepreneurship should not only involve the private sector. The public sector can be also involved. There is a long history of job creation in public enterprise in Bord na Móna and other agencies. We should work together and produce a vision involving the public and private sectors to create sustainable jobs that are not simply based on making a quick buck but based on a knowledge economy which takes into account all elements. It is about making something substantial, concrete and sustainable that will improve our lives.

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