Dan Boyle (Green Party)

It is particularly useful to have a debate on the position of the Irish labour market in the globalised economy given the present state of the global economy and Ireland's position within it. Recently I listened with interest to Senator Quinn's observations in a radio programme on the role played by Dr. T. K. Whitaker in Ireland's economic development. Senator Quinn gave a fair treatise on the fact that, largely on his own but with the help of other significant political figures who were mentioned in the programme, Dr. Whitaker brought Ireland into the real world in respect of global economics. Until that time Irish economic policy was based on the notion of self-sufficiency that suggested we could meet all our needs from within our own resources and that we needed to protect the local market in so far as possible. As Members are aware, this led to stagnation, mass emigration and the failure to develop an indigenous entrepreneurial economy. Consequently we should be grateful for the success of the programme for economic expansion and Dr. Whitaker's role in it.

The world has advanced significantly since then and what we now understand by globalisation is a matter for debate. Undoubtedly, while a globalised economy has increased total planetary wealth, major questions arise as to how such wealth is distributed around the world as a result of such economic policies. Heretofore, it has been the case that globalisation has led to the further enrichment of already rich countries and Ireland can consider itself fortunate to be on that side of the divide. Our economic policies in the past 15 years in particular have wedded Ireland to being one of the most open economies possible in a globalised market. While we have been successful in increasing our standards of living and gross national and domestic product, we also have exposed ourselves to being reliant on larger economies. Were such economies to catch cold, we would be at risk of catching influenza, if not pneumonia.

Strangely, we may be coming full circle. I do not refer to a return to the de Valera days of self-sufficiency but to a need for a balanced economy that at least incorporates a strong indigenous economy that will meet a bedrock of our needs. Such an economy would enable us to build on the entrepreneurial success that we have achieved in the past 15 years to produce indigenous companies that face outwards towards the world. The problem has been that although it has been both significant and beneficial, we are still highly reliant on foreign direct investment and its associated expertise. We should view the current position as an opportunity to reassess and alter slightly the direction of economic policy and some factors in our favour exist that will help us to do so.

For instance the environmental crisis should be viewed almost as an opportunity as we examine means of using technological and entrepreneurial approaches to deal with the real problems faced by the planet and Ireland's contribution to their resolution. Since the Green Party's accession to Government, I have been struck by the number of people from the business community who have visited me at my constituency office or who have sought meetings with me in Leinster House. While I would have treated such meetings warily in the past as I wondered what was the agenda, I have been struck by the ingenuity of people's proposals regarding entrepreneurial ideas to address environmental problems in the fields of energy efficiency and waste management. Ireland can shine in the aforementioned two sectors. I also heard a mini-debate on radio recently in which the commentator Tom Savage spoke of the ability to define a clean, green image as our selling point as we face outwards toward the global market in future. While there has been too great a willingness to compromise this in the past, we should now consider it to be one of our greatest assets in the future.

As Senator Quinn noted, real changes are required in terms of greater investment in education, which is badly needed. Standards must improve in particular areas that are required for economic improvement. Changes also are required in the related area of research and development. We are well below the Lisbon Agenda targets and the levels of research and development that exist in Ireland are still overly dependent on that which is brought in by those companies that are multinational in scale and that do so as part of a production process. Such processes often originate somewhere else, go somewhere else afterwards and the added value of the research and development is not what it could or should be in Ireland.

The budget offers a good opportunity and I am hopeful the Minister for Finance will respond to many of the representations made to him in this respect. I refer both to those made by the Green Party as Government partners and by bodies such as the Irish Taxation Institute. One of the central messages in the budget should be to increase incentives towards research and development that would induce more people to come into this country with value-added research and development processes and, more importantly, would develop a culture of research and development within Ireland itself, which has lagged well behind in this regard. The proportion of research and development carried out in Ireland that is performed by Irish-only companies is pitifully small. Until it can be done from within our own resources, our ability to protect ourselves in the event of a global downturn will be seriously diminished.

The onus is on Government to ensure we progress these areas because we have been deluged with reports on enterprise culture in recent years, including the Telesis, Culliton and O'Sullivan reports. The analysis of what needs to be done is clear. Now that we have an opportunity due to the change in the global and national economies, it is time to share that analysis and put in place those recommendations. It is an opportunity we can grasp. To do so would be to put in place our economic prosperity for generations to come.