The past, we are told, is a foreign country.

Fifty years ago so much was different. The Everly Brothers were top of the charts, Spurs were league champions and a new broadcasting service called Teilifis Eireann was just turning on.

On the other hand, Tipperary held the Liam McCarthy cup and another Irish American was in the Oval Office……!

Tragically however, years of poor public policy left 1960s Ireland isolated, impoverished and ill-prepared for the challenges of a rapidly changing international marketplace.

Maybe the past isn’t such a foreign country after all. Read the full story

Hello,

Thanks for clicking my new website. 

Many people have suffered huge losses due to bad government – lost their jobs, lost their savings, lost their homes. We must now make the future of our families secure again. To do that, we need to transform the way we do things in Ireland. We are pledged to that task.

We can build a stronger local community by developing new initiatives to help our children do better in School, to help patients get quicker access to care, to make criminals think twice because of a high likelihood of being caught. I keep a close eye on how these local services are getting on.

Ireland is facing huge economic challenges. Mistakes by bankers, regulators and politicians are now severely hurting families and small and medium sized businesses. Rather than sit back and watch the crisis unfold, Fine Gael is ready to take bold and urgent corrective action to fix Ireland based on five steps:

• Jobs: Top Priority
• Fix the Public Finances
• New Politics
• FairCare- Making our Health Service Work
• Smaller, Smarter Government

If you’d like to help out or volunteer I’d love to hear from you. If I can be of assistance in any matter please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best Wishes,

Richard

The top priority for a new Fine Gael government is to get people back to work and stop forced emigration. Young people have been the main victims of the economic crisis. Two out of every three people pushed out of work are under the age of 30. We are losing our youth to emigration. Fine Gael refuses to accept this. We have developed a jobs strategy that casts aside failed policies of the past and looks to the future.

New Era: New Jobs

To underpin jobs we need to strengthen vital arteries of our economy – High-performance Broadband, a Smart Power Grid, Renewable Energy, Reliable Water. Our strategy to do this we call NewEra, designed to:

• Invest in new infrastructures that support recovery
• Sell foreign shares and old assets to fund the new opportunities
• Drive lower prices for consumers by more efficient operation of these utilities
• Cut waste and our dependence on imported energy by €6,000m

This will open up opportunity for thousands of jobs in modern businesses which will be the cornerstone of recovery and yield 50,000 jobs during the construction phase.

Keep Young Talent at Home

 Fine Gael will work tirelessly to reverse emigration. One in three young people with good qualifications and skills are unemployed. We must create opportunities to keep them at home and active.

•  Work Experience: Place 23,000 in work experience with supported access to further education.
• Second Chance Education: Offer 17,000 young people with no qualifications or only construction skills the opportunity to go back to education.
• Job Placement:  Support employers willing to create up to 5,000 new posts.

Open Up Opportunities:

Government inaction has been an obstacle to job creation. That must change. Two years on, and €100 billion spent on banks, we still have businesses withering and dying for want of credit. Simple changes can make a real difference: 

• A small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme.
• A quota in Public Procurement for Small Business.
• Abolish the Travel Tax and get more flights into Ireland. 

Other countries have shown the way. We must apply the same urgency.

Open Up Opportunities:

One of our great strengths as a nation is our ingenuity and creativity. But Ireland has lost its edge. A cosy circle won too much influence – feathered its own nest and brought ruin on the country. We must get back to genuine enterprise. 

• An Enterprise Fund for new start-ups.
• Target promising opportunities (Digital Gaming, International Education)
• Less tax and regulation burdens for micro business (and stop bankruptcy blighting a person’s future forever) 

A broad Competitiveness Pact can rebuild our ability to trade overseas, where fair adjustments are made across the board – in fees and rents, in the boardrooms, in utility prices, not just on the shop floor.

For more information please visit: http://connect.finegael2011.com/forum/topics/jobs-protecting-and-creating