Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:“acknowledges the Government's recent achievements in:

— renegotiating the EU/IMF bailout to cut interest payments and free up investments for stimulus;

— reducing Ireland's borrowing needs by €20 billion over the coming decade by securing a restructuring of the promissory notes to creditors in Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide banks;

— improving access to finance for business by:

— re-capitalising the pillar banks;

— setting lending targets; and

— introducing new financing options such as the Partial Credit Guarantee Scheme, the Microfinance Fund and the Development Capital Scheme;

— placing a whole-of-Government focus on supporting job creation through the cumulative effect of the annual Action Plan for Jobs process, which builds on the initial Jobs Initiative of May 2011; and

— assisting the long-term unemployed being prepared to move into employment through more regular engagement, upskilling and training under the Pathways to Work programme;

notes:

— the systematic way in which the Government and its agencies implemented the 2012 Action Plan for Jobs which, in parallel with the recently launched 2013 plan, is helping to transform the operating environment for business, to support job creation and competitiveness; subsequent action plans will build on the work completed by the first two;

— a net increase of over 10,000 jobs in Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) Ireland companies in 2012, which is the highest level of job creation since 2006 for Enterprise Ireland companies, and the highest level in a decade for IDA Ireland companies;

— the 1,200 increase in employment in the latest Quarterly National Household Survey figures which is the first annual increase in employment recorded since the second quarter of 2008;

— that private sector employment has grown on average by 1,000 jobs a month in the past 15 months; this is in contrast to 250,000 private sector jobs being lost in the three years before the current Government took office;

— the major jobs announcements since March 2011 including: PayPal (1,000 jobs), Kerry Group (800 jobs), Sky (800 jobs), Paddy Power (600 jobs), Mylan (500 jobs), Apple (500 jobs), Northern Trust (400 jobs), EA/Bioware (500 jobs in total), Eli Lilly (200 jobs) and HP (280 jobs);

— the regional spread of these new jobs, including new investments in Letterkenny, Sligo, Mayo, Westport, Galway, Louth, Dundalk, Drogheda, Kildare, Leixlip, Kilkenny, Bray and Limerick;

— the latest goods trade figures published by the Central Statistics Office, which showed that goods exports in 2012 increased on 2011 levels to hit €92 billion, the highest figure since 2002, while services exports for the first nine months of 2012 are up over 11% on the equivalent period in 2011; hence, the annual overall increase in exports for 2012 is likely to be significant;

— that Budget 2013 includes a 10 point plan to support the Small and Medium Enterprise sector;

— the achievement of the Government in securing agreement under the Irish Presidency of the EU for a pan-European fund of €6 billion for a Youth Guarantee Scheme to address youth unemployment;

— that, through a variety of funds and schemes, the Government has managed to provide more than €2 billion of non-bank, new streams of finance into the market through such initiatives as the Development Capital Fund, the Partial Credit Guarantee Scheme, Innovation Fund Ireland, a new Seed and Venture Capital Fund and a variety of National Pensions Reserve Fund SME funds;

— the on-going cross-Border co-operation on economic development, through the work of agencies such as Tourism Ireland, InterTradeIreland and others; and

— the increased expenditure on employment support schemes since the current Government took office, such that total spending in support of people who are unemployed has increased significantly from €958 million in 2012 to €1.045 billion in 2013 with an additional 10,000 work placements as well as support for additional training and educational opportunities; and

commends the Government for:

— restoring Ireland's reputation internationally as a stable economy which is open for business and attractive for investors; with the two major international rankings of competitiveness indicating that our performance is going in the right direction;according to the IMD's World Competitiveness Yearbook, Ireland is ranked 20th in 2012, up from 24th in 2011;

— re-establishing order in the banking system and allowing Ireland to re-enter the bond markets;

— maintaining Ireland's corporation tax rate at 12.5% and keeping income taxes at the same levels since coming into Government;

— the implementation of a stringent monitoring and reporting structure for the cross-Government implementation of the Action Plan for Jobs, led by the Department of the Taoiseach, to ensure that job creation is the number one priority of all Departments and agencies of the State;

— the strategic focus of the Disruptive Reforms measures contained in the Action Plan for Jobs, being implemented in partnership with senior industry figures, which have the potential for significant job creation;

— facilitating growth in employment for the first time since 2008 by systematically tackling issues that have improved the operating environment for business and strengthened Ireland's competitiveness;

— recognising the critical contribution of the micro and small business sector in job creation and commends the Government's commitment to reform of the micro and small business infrastructure, including providing a first-stop-shop to support the sector;

— targeting investment under its Capital Investment Programme at projects that will create employment; and

— addressing the skills needs of the economy through programmes such as Springboard, JobBridge and the ICT Action Plan, which are providing education, training and work experience directly linked to the needs of the enterprise sector.

I thank Sinn Féin for raising this important debate but I am disappointed with its Members' input so far. I listened to five speakers but there was not one mention of enterprise, building new export markets, creating access to finance for small business to build on, how we need to be more competitive, how we drive innovation in our businesses or how we can grow successful businesses that can win new markets. Neither was there one mention of the new sectors which will drive the future economy.

Instead, what I heard was a call to employ an additional 30,000 in the public service and spend €13 billion on a stimulus fund. Rebuilding our economy is not about finding new ways of spending moneys we do not have or recruiting people on to the public payroll who have to be paid from taxpayers' money. That is the very problem we inherited, namely of an economy built on free-flowing public spending, a property boom and a destruction of enterprise, export markets and innovation. That is the shift we have to make. No one ever said this was going to be an arithmetic exercise with 20,000 jobs created in year one and so many in year two.

That is not the way economies work. We need to rebuild a completely devastated economy. It is as if there has been an earthquake and many of the foundations have been rocked to the core. Banking and the public finances have been broken beyond all recognition. Employment is a major issue as Sinn Féin has rightly noted. Some 90,000 jobs per year were being lost in the economy. We cannot turn that around by a simple stroke of the pen. We inherited an economy spending 50% more than it was collecting in revenue. That was the economy we inherited but we cannot solve that by agreeing to spend even more or by raising €13 billion from somewhere or by taking on more public servants. That would simply make the hole bigger.

Sinn Féin does not seem to recall that as a nation we were unable to borrow anywhere at one stage. The only people we could borrow from were those in the troika, which set conditions because we were effectively bankrupt as a nation. That is the economy we inherited and that is the economy we must fix. There is no point in being naive about the solution. It is not a case of back to freewheeling spending in the construction sector or freewheeling spending on new public services. Would that it were that simple but it is not; it is about rebuilding an economy that has been shattered. It must be built on enterprise, innovation, winning new export markets and building strong, successful companies that can carve out those markets and they must be predominantly Irish businesses. We are fortunate to have overseas investment but we need to build a strong indigenous engine of growth that can develop from our own ingenuity and skills base. That is the ambition. Addressing this will require and has required considerable changes in the way we conduct our economy.

It is a pity Deputy Jonathan O'Brien is not here now because he used a phrase to the effect that we are continuing with the failed policies of the previous Government, but nothing could be further from the truth. We have determined that we will not build over the same fault lines that destroyed our economy, the fault lines of freewheeling debt, a construction sector that was too big and selling houses to one another at ever-inflated prices. That is not the economy we intend to build; we are going to build a different economy.

We have had to do things which for many were unthinkable. The first thing we did was renegotiate the deal with the EU and the IMF. I have listened to speaker after speaker from Sinn Féin pretending that in some way we have been saving bankers but the bankers got wiped out. Anyone who had shares in the banks lost virtually everything and bondholders have had to stump up €15 billion. One could argue that the credit guarantee given by the previous Government exposed the Irish taxpayer and naturally it did, but the job of this Government has been to redress that. We have renegotiated the interest rate on the bonds, which was worth €10 billion. Now, we have renegotiated the promissory note which will mean we need not go into the market to raise €20 billion. Now, as a sovereign State, we can borrow in the open market at reasonable rates of interest again. This effort has involved considerable rebuilding and it has taken great deal of work to fix our public finances and fix the way our banks have behaved. It has involved a good deal of work but we have made real progress.

I recognise that Sinn Féin is, rightly, impatient for employment and I am impatient for it as well. That is the job I and the Minister of State, Deputy John Perry, get up to do every day of the week. We are trying to promote more job opportunities in the country, whether for small or big enterprises, whether they are foreign-owned or domestic. That is what drives us. However, to do that requires fixing things that were broken.

Some Sinn Féin speakers referred to the need to use the National Pensions Reserve Fund and the European Investment Bank money and they are correct but I did not hear any reference to the fact that we are using EIB money to fund a stimulus package and PPPs. I heard no mention of the fact that the National Pensions Reserve Fund is now putting money into funds to drive and small and medium enterprises. Some €2.5 billion worth of new money is going in to fund small and medium enterprises and this is completely aside from the banking sector. This money is being generated by the State's ingenuity. The process involves coming up with new models that can help to fund business. It is using money in a creative and sustainable way rather than spending it today such that it is gone tomorrow. We are putting it into funds that can build strong enterprises that will drive our future. That is what we are doing and that is what stimulus means. That is the way to stimulate the economy, which we must rebuild properly rather than simply indulge in freewheeling spending. It must involve the smart use of public funds, infrastructure funds, small and medium enterprise equity funds and restructuring funds for small businesses which have got into trouble and need fresh equity. That is the route we must travel and we must work to develop strong enterprises which can recreate all our communities rather than only some of them.

We have also had to focus on restoring competitiveness and rebuilding our export potential. We spend a good deal of time on trade missions, relentlessly supporting good Irish companies which are trying to win new markets. We are opening up those new markets. Let us consider the work of Enterprise Ireland and the structure of Irish-owned companies and where they are selling. The United Kingdom is diminishing in importance because we are now carving out new markets whether in Canada or the United States. This week I was in Texas and the south-eastern states of the United States. These are new strong growth markets where we can bring innovative companies and win fresh business. That is the route we are travelling.

We must reorient our welfare services as well and the work of the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, is decidedly important in changing the notion that our welfare services are about insisting that people be idle in order to get paid. She is reorienting the whole system with an emphasis on helping to develop people. She has introduced schemes, including JobBridge and the momentum scheme, which also involves the Department of Education and Skills and the Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, and the Springboard initiative, which I heard Deputy Jonathan O'Brien speak about disparagingly. These are real schemes to help re-skill people who perhaps committed themselves to the construction sector and related sectors. They will allow these people to re-skill and enter into the new employment areas and we are seeing these new employment areas beginning to develop.

Let us consider what our plan is delivering. The IDA has had its best years in a decade in the past two years, one has been better than the other. Enterprise Ireland has had its best year in more than five years. Sinn Féin speakers quoted from the quarterly national household survey but they overlooked the fact that the past two quarters have seen employment growth for the first time in five years. Sinn Féin speakers overlooked the fact that the private sector is expanding and has been for 15 months. We are seeing the results of slowly creating a new environment whereby businesses can win new export markets and we must continue with that work.

We have ambitions and the work we did last year has been helpful in this regard. The Action Plan for Jobs saw a new approach. Sinn Féin maintains we are not making jobs a priority but we are. Every Department has committed to actions to make it easier for businesses to create jobs, whether the Department of Finance and the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, with his small business package in the budget or the Department of Health and the Minister, Deputy James Reilly, with the health innovation hub, which is designed to take innovative companies and get them to embed within our hospital system. All these initiatives are contributing to the changes that we must make. We have brought in initiatives relating to micro-finance and temporary loan guarantees. These are new ways of trying to deal with the problems that companies face. We have introduced a first-time exporters division to take companies which had never looked abroad but which, given the constrained domestic economy, must carve out new markets. We are helping them to make steps into those new markets and helping them to fund the process. That is the route we must travel.

It is disheartening that there is no understanding of what needs to happen to change our economy among the Sinn Féin speakers. It will not be simply about finding new ways to spend public money; that is not the solution. The nation is still spending one third more than it collects in tax revenue. That is the sad truth and we must continue to correct and deal with these problems. The way to deal with these problems is to build strong enterprises that take people on and open up new opportunities. I believe the Action Plan for Jobs was a success last year. It was not a dramatic success but a real success. We delivered more than 90% of the actions we took on. We brought in the type of innovations to which I have referred. Now, we want to build on that. We will be more ambitious in 2013. We have carved out areas where we believe there is real opportunity. The JobsPlus scheme being introduced by the Department of Social Protection is a recognition that we need to do something special to encourage employers to take on the long-term unemployed, to which Sinn Féin speakers have adverted. It involves a simple subsidy of €75 per week to take on someone who is 12 months out of work, or €100 per week for someone who is two years out of work.

That is a solid proposal which favours the people Sinn Féin rightly argues have been displaced and damaged by this recession. We are trying to give a leg up to people who are in that category. That is the purpose of the recently launched Momentum scheme which mixes on the job skills with off the job training. That is innovative thinking.

The development capital fund which we launched last year is aimed at companies which are basically sound but have weak balance sheets and require capital to expand into new markets. We are putting in place a fund with private sector leverage so that we can get more out of it. We put forward €50 million and are leveraging it up to €200 million. That is the sort of smart thinking required from us in the context of limited resources.

There are real opportunities in practical areas, such as reforming licensing in the retail sector. The Minister of State, Deputy Perry, is committed to simplifying the way in which business is done and making it easier so that people do not have to comply with 25 different licences when they want to open a retail store. The action plan for jobs tries to carve out new niches. There are opportunities in big data and in the green sector. We are doubling the ICT skills base in the coming years and offering conversion courses in areas of real opportunity. We can green our buildings by developing higher standards of energy efficiency while employing people in the process. This is an innovative approach. I acknowledge it may involve a lot of small proposals but we never said there would be a big bang.

The Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, is making our research expenditure more forensic by focusing on areas in which we can add value and create opportunities for our businesses. The Minister of State, Deputy Perry, is introducing a one-stop-shop through which small businesses can find out the supports on offer from the State. These practical measures are not as glamorous as announcing a €13 billion fund but we cannot play in that arena. We have to rebuild brick by brick, starting with a solid foundation for strong enterprises which export and are innovative. One would be proud to accompany Irish companies to Texas, China or India because of the quality of our people and the companies they are building. We have pledged to row in behind them. God willing, we will deliver on our targets. If we fail it will not be for the lack of commitment because we are putting all our efforts into achieving them. We are open to new ideas. One of the features of the action plan for jobs is that every year is a new year and when ideas spring up we will seek to adapt them. Today we announced the bringing in of industrial partners to help us drive those new ideas. That is the route to reforming our economy, rebuilding our society and creating opportunities for our people. I know the Deputies opposite genuinely crave that change as much as we do.

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