Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Another issue is the detachment of local authorities from the experience of workers, traders and businesses throughout the State. Typically, local authorities just see a euro sign when they look at this sector of society. In the North, local authorities do tremendous work in the provision of training programmes for businesses, traders and workers. Such training programmes must be developed by local authorities in the South. In fact, the training programmes must be directed in two ways. They must also be within the local authorities to ensure that local authorities develop their policies in sympathy with the needs of the people outside.

Another big issue in this area at present is the migration of billions of euro of retail sales from towns onto the Internet. Three of every four of those euro are leaving the State and entering a foreign till. There is a massive need for local authorities to take the lead in providing online towns, whereby local traders who do not necessarily have the ICT experience to provide e-commerce to their customers are given an opportunity to migrate onto that virtual space as well. That would stem the level of leakage of these retail euro out of the country and ensure that those jobs stay at home.

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