1. Economic Stimulus Package – NewERA Jobs

“Adopt Fine Gael’s insightful strategy to create economic revival by reforming and refocusing semi-states. It’s the best thought out strategy in town, keeps the extra borrowing needed off the deficit and will create jobs in crucial sectors.” – Eddie Hobbs

The severity of Ireland’s recession compared with other countries is a direct result of the economic policies of Fianna Fail. Now the country faces the duel challenge of hundreds of thousands of people unemployed along with the collapse of the national finances. This Government has only put forward new taxes and ill thought out budget cuts to address the national finances but has done nothing to get people back to work or to fix the economy and restore our competitiveness.

Fine Gael recognises that in order to get people back to work and generate new investment, we need to reinvent the basis of Ireland’s economy around the big trends of the coming decades – the need for cleaner energy and greater use of information and communications technologies.

Fine Gael has published its NewERA economic stimulus and re-structuring policy to rebuild Ireland once again.

NewERA has two main aims:

1. To once again make the Irish economy competitive by investing in key 21st century infrastructures, notably as communications, water and energy.
2. To provide immediate jobs in the planning, construction and operation of these key infrastructure projects. Fine Gael estimates we can make 105,000 new jobs over the next four years.

How will NewERA work?

The Irish economy in the 20th century was held back by our bad transport infrastructure. This means that bad roads, narrow bridges, slow rail lines and badly resourced ports held back the whole Irish economy.

With a little help from EU funding we managed to address a lot of these problems but now a new range of problems is holding us back. Things like the internet and green energy are now central to the wellbeing of any modern developed economy and that’s why Ireland is in trouble. Anyone who is lucky enough to have broadband knows that it doesn’t compete with even our nearest neighbour in the UK. And our computers and factories are still dependant on power provided by imported oil and gas. Ireland will never fully recover unless we attack these shortcomings with vigour and confidence. We literally need to plan and invest for a new era.

Fine Gael’s plan involves an €18bn stimulus plan to kick start the Irish economy through investment in badly needed new energy, water and communications infrastructure which will be built or supported by State companies. But we recognise it’s not good enough to give the same old State companies more public money when most of them act independently and usually in their own interest.

We need a smarter way to manage public companies to meet new challenging goals.

This is why we have proposed the creation of a new industrial development holding company, NewERA Ltd, that will be responsible for delivering a targeted series of large scale investments by managing the State’s portfolio of semi State companies.

2. Tackling Youth Unemployment

Fine Gael Leader Enda Kenny and Enterprise Spokesman Leo Varadkar launched Fine Gael’s plan to save a lost generation to unemployment by reducing the number of under 25s on the live register by a third over the next year. The plan involves new opportunities in training and job placements while protecting existing jobs.

3. Saving Jobs – SME (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) Survival Package

Key facts:

• There are 429,400 people on the Live Register.
• Unemployment has more than doubled in little over a year.
• The economic competitiveness of the Irish economy continues to slide.
• The IMF said of Ireland during the summer that “In recent years, Ireland has become the most expensive location in the Eurozone”.
• The Government has yet to publish any dedicated jobs plan to help get people back to work.

There are more people on the live register in Ireland now than in any other time since the foundation of the State. Any plan to get us out of this recession will need a clear and comprehensive strategy to both create jobs and protect existing jobs. Fine Gael has already put forward its plan to create new jobs and modernise the Irish economy in its NewERA strategy but also proposed how we would save existing jobs before it was too late.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the Irish economy. They number almost one quarter of a million and employ more than 800,000 people. We have all heard about the high profile jobs losses but what we don’t hear is the silent haemorrhaging of jobs from the small businesses in every town and village in the country. They contribute billions to the economy in taxes and PRSI. Yet the Government has failed to produce any concrete measures to support SMEs and stem the tide of rising unemployment.

Small businesses are suffering. After years of rising costs mostly imposed on them by government, SMEs must now contend with falling demand for their goods and services.

That is why Fine Gael wants to support small businesses through the recession through our SME rescue package, which includes 18 specific measures to help small firms survive the recession, retain jobs and hopefully create new ones. Our proposals include:

1. Offer employers who increase overall employment levels a PRSI exemption for new staff recruited over the next two years, or an alternative of a €6,000 wage subsidy per employee over the same period;
2. Reduce local authority rates and freeze Government charges;
3. Reduce energy costs;
4. End upward only rent reviews to ensure that businesses can benefit from market rates;
5. Abolish the €10 travel tax and reverse last year’s VAT hike;
6. Ensure prompt payments to businesses from Government and creditors;
7. Make it easier for Irish SMEs to win public tenders.