Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I respectfully suggest that the logic in the Minister's response is flawed. He stated that the purpose of the Bill is economic growth and that economic growth and economic development are what he is talking about. That is not stated in the Long Title of the Bill, which states that the Bill is for the purpose of "making credit available to enterprises and to other persons". Under the section setting out the purposes of the Act, the only other wording is about the "availability of credit ... to benefit the economy". The section goes on, and pretty much out of nowhere it states: "to contribute to the economic development" and "to enhance competitiveness." The Minister's response was that he liked the idea of the proposed amendment but the legal advice he got was that the category of employment should not be included in this section because it does not link back to the purpose of the Bill. The categories of competitiveness and economic development are included in the section, but neither of these, with which I agree, are included in the Long Title. Therefore, if the category of competitiveness can be pulled into this section under subsection (h) and is not mentioned anywhere else, surely the category of employment can be pulled in.

We all talk about economic growth, and it is a good thing, but what is the purpose of it other than to get on top of our debt ratio? It is about employment and jobs. It is all well and good having the strategic investment bank thinking that it needs to lend money to SMEs in order to have economic development, but what is economic development? It may interpret it as GNP or GDP, which basically means that as long as the company is investing, GDP and GNP will go up, because that is one of the five constituent parts, but if the Government is going to bring in competitiveness as an explicit objective, surely the most fundamental economic objective is not GNP growth or competitiveness but employment. The only reason we want competitiveness is for the sake of employment. Competitiveness in and of itself is not a thing; it is an enabler of employment. If the category of competitiveness is included in the section, I respectfully suggest that the legal advice the Minister has is flawed and that including the category of employment would not just be a nice thing to do in terms of the legislation but would actively allow whoever ends up running the investment bank to say to a bank such as Bank of Ireland that it has given the bank a tranche of €500 million and it expects to see some very smart investments which result in the creation of jobs. I ask the Minister to reconsider this amendment; perhaps he might consider introducing a similar amendment on Report Stage. It seems a very sensible thing to do.

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