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SINN FÉIN HAS launched its jobs plan which it says will “demonstrate that with the political will the government can deliver 156,000 additional jobs”.
Sinn Féin spokesperson for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Peadar Tóibín was joined by party president Gerry Adams TD, deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald TD and finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty TD for the launch.
Deputy Adams said that the plan has been fully costed and provides a socially responsible way to reduce the deficit and create and retain jobs.
At the launch, Deputy Tóibín said: “In the last four years Ireland has shed more jobs than any other western state per capita since the Great Depression”.
We have identified €13 billion which can be sourced to create jobs, improve competitiveness and increase productivity. This would be funded from the National Pension Reserve Fund, European Investment Bank, incentivised investment from the private pension sector and we would end the capital spending cuts of this government.
He said that an investment of this scale would create about 156,000 jobs and retain up to 15,000 existing jobs.
Prioritise investment
It took six months to produce the proposal, and Sinn Féin said it will prioritise investment to:
It will also build an additional 100 schools and refurbish 75 more over the next three years (€350 million); establish 50 new Primary Health Care Centres (€250 million); and develop an €1billion investment in sustainable wind power and wave energy.
Create jobs
In addition to this, Sinn Féin said it will seek to support business to create jobs by:
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I would love to think it could work…..
Otherwise known as the Magic Porridge Pot Strategy. How many times have they spent the NPRF? And yet it just keeps giving.
Do think there are a few decent ideas in there and fair play for coming forward with them. However, the overall scheme: I’m not convinced by. The funding for it seems to magic up €5.8bn from an already stretched NPRF along with €3bn from the private pension sector which translates to a further levy on workers in the private sector. Finally €1.5bn from the European Investment Bank could go either way and is very much project dependent. Of course that would be made an awful lot easier if there was a Europe wide agreed stimulus package.
It’s what will happen one way or another in the end by whomever is in power. The current and last Govt. strategy has failed, and is being replicated across all of the Eurozone. This failure is being replicated across all of Europe.
The ECB approach of severe cuts, destryoing demand will simultaneously trying to have everyone export to growth cannot work. We all know that.
I was under impression that SF thought that more borrowing from Europe was a BAD thing, no? So are the Eurosceptics or not?
SF should take the oil and gas that belongs to all of us back from shell then we could pay back whats owed that would make us all rich
@ Eddie – it’s not as simple as that. We’d have to extract it first, and we don’t have the expertise or equipment to do that. To get these things might wipe out any possible profits the sale of the oil and gas may give us. Shell already have the expertise and equipment, so it is profitable for them to try. Not a nice truth, but a truth nonetheless.
Where are they going to get the money for this? Tax the rich until they leave?
Why do they think they can micromanage the economy? As great as the intentions, it’s doomed for failure in all honesty.
2/10
Raiding the pension fund sounds all too familiar, before you point that out.
obviously by selling more 1916 calendars on there website! ;-)
Is it not better that the NPF be used to hopefully create jobs rather than what happened to most of it?
“Hopefully” answers your question.
Most of what they are suggesting here is standard politics and economics in most of the countries bailing us out. It certainly is more grounded in economic reality that the repeated economic collapses that FF and FG give us every twenty years.
Michael at least it would go into the Irish economy rather than the black hole that is the banks which has swallowed a large chunk of what used to be the NPF?
Why are you and people like you who utter the same ”Tax the rich until they leave?” mantra so worried about them leaving ? Their uninvested Billions is no good sitting in their bank A/cs. We need growth stimulation to promote our economy and that is onlky achieved by spending money.
Come on you know you want to …spend, spend, spend.
And what effect would the rich leaving have? Smaller wine and sports car sales? Oh, the horror. Who knows, maybe it will attract people who are capable of working for a living instead of skimming other people’s money.
@Eileen
What do you think happens when your money goes into a bank?
Savings and Production grow an economy, not spending. Anyone can spend. Not everyone can produce.
@Seamus
They’ll be bringing all of the jobs with them, in the sports cars they worked hard to afford.
Leave the begrudgery in 2008 please
Actually Eileen, rich people leaving their millions in our banks is pretty useful for our economy.
@Kerry
Disagree. Let the people decide where that money should be spent. Not a bureaucrat.
Seamus,
Well it’s clear you didn’t read the article properly At first Michael.
Exactly Eileen!
What’s wrong with selling 1916 posters by looking at all the naysayers on here the FG Blueshirt Nazi salutes calender would make a fortune.
….interesting Jack, correct me if I’m wrong but was the then Chief of Staff of the IRA, Seam Russell not in cahoots with the Nazis trying to organise assistance in order to “unify” Ireland by way of an invasion….
The day the rich leave Ireland is the day I am a totally happy man because the rich are only parasites on the backs or workers.
Is that Enda drilling the Troops at the Mayo Think tank. :)
@Jack Daniels
From bust to BOOOOM
Ka-boom?
Open up loads of ink cartridge factories.
Um, and where exactly is this miraculous €13,000,000,000 coming from??
Not sure exactly Z, but I think I’d like to see them try their plan out. In the hope that it would work. There’s a lack of any fresh ideas. And if it don’t work we can all tell Gerry and Mary Lou to shut up!!!(I like parse for some reason!)
I’d like to see more detail before I’d agree to let them try it out in the real world. Details, and answers that really do answer, and deflect, the questions asked. I think the majority of people who are sceptical are not just sceptical of this plan, but also of SF’s capacity to be transparent and honest. Their plan mightn’t be worse then the current government’s, it might also not be better. Different only means different. For people to be able to make an informed decision they first must be properly informed. Our current government is not good at this, if SF want to be seen to be a better option, they have earn people’s trust by giving them all the information without spin and without hidden catches.
€13bn more spending with money we don’t have!!
David maybe you should read the article before commenting. They say it’s fully costed and they will produce more detail. I’ll wait for more details before pouring cold water on all their ideas. Talking about sound economic policies look at our current government paid €18 billion to bondholders with money we don’t have. Now that makes sense.
So burn the bond holders and slyly pocket € 5 billion. Is that the plan?
Burn the unsecured bondholders yes that would make a lot of sense. Does it make sense to you to pay unsecured bondholders 100% Z? ??
What will FG do with it but give it back to bond holders whose investments have failed and for some reason, against all business logical, it deems should be paid back or try the FF approach and watch it shoveled in to their own pockets or their friends.
Time that Irish politics follows approaches that have worked across Europe rather than the FF/FG gombeen politics and planning that have destroyed this country repeatedly.
Do we know how much the NPRF and private pension funds have invested in unsecured bonds? It could mean burning those they are hoping will fund this.
David, gone take your blue shirt comments elsewhere!! Your buddies in government are willing to reject a €400 pair of shoes to a child with down syndrome but are willing to hand over a billion to bondholder who many economists say should have been burned!!
We all get it that you are a conservative and your natural reaction is to object to anything that comes from the left!
Fine Gael and labour have lied and are no better than fianna fail! Instead of taking a top down approach to cuts they are cutting from the bottom down ensuring that the rich are well protected!
Sinn Fein have valid policies and points however the mighty right will always win because they are so far up the bankers arses!!
If burning the bold holders screws us more than not burning them, then it’s not a very good idea. No more bail-out loans and ridiculously high yields on bonds. Create a new currency that’s worth f*ck all because there’s nothing to back it with. On the other hand, maybe the whole world will thank us for our bravery and shower us with golden pennies. So, Kerry, which sounds more likely to you?
Personally I’d go down the Iceland route. Defaulted same time as us ignored all the experts advice and warnings about burning the bondholders and let their banks go. Low and behold they are reaching near full employment and have access to the bond markets again. While in Ireland we borrowed €18 billion to pay unsecured bondholders this year alone. Next year we will be borrowing circa €17 billion to do the same increasing our national debt to something like 160%.
So anyway Z? have you really looked into what happened in Iceland and compared it to Greece (unemployment now running at 25.1%), Portugal, Spain & Ireland or does your research into alternatives only go as far as throw away sentences about golden pennies’?
I think David asks a perfectly valid question! Surely the key point is where they’re pulling this 13bn from. According to an article in the Irish times on 30 November 2010, there was only €4.2bn left in the NPRF. God only knows what’s left now. http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/theindex/2010/11/30/the-national-pensions-reserve-fund-an-obituary/
So saying it’s fully costed doesn’t cut it. If it was fully costed why didn’t they publish these details already?
Anyone remember the Underpants Gnomes from South Park?
Step 1: Collect underpants.
Step 2 ????
Step 3 Profit.
Always with the Iceland example. But Iceland was not locked into the Euro, so they had the option to devalue rather than sell state assets, raise taxes and cut social spending. Secondly, Iceland did not have a collapsing property bubble. Secondly, depositors in he Icelandic banks lost all their savings. Do you really think the Irish public would have been happy with that? Lastly, why do assume that all is well and rosy in Iceland these days? I’d suggest you check with someone currently living there. You’re operating from received wisdom, not fact. There reason you down here the “Icelandic argument” made outside of gurus like this is that it has been thoroughly discredited. As for golden pennies, I would love to see it, nothing throwaway about that, but it’s just not going to happen, is it? Neither is continuously ranting here. I rant for the fun of it, I’m not deluding myself that being high-and-mighty on a free-to-use website will make an iota of difference to the country. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that what you’re doing is effective political activism; it’s entertainment, nothing more.
Z? It’s simple non thought out economics that they want..the stuff you could squeeze into the bottom quarter of the entertainment page of a tabloid…you know urself,throw out a few buzz words but not even scratch the surface of the issues their actions would have down the line.. sure what’s wrong with that?
Odd that the IMF wrote a paper on the success of the Icelandic approach then isn’t it Z? BTW they did have a housing bubble and part of their solution was to write down the negative equity. So you say the Icelandic approach has been discredited. Provide some papers or facts to back up this claim. Once again I repeat Iceland is back in the bond markets and Ireland is not. Pretty clear which approach is the more successful option.
@ Kerry – good to see you’ve learnt from Nicolas to actually as for objective proof. To should apply it to yourself. But I’m confused, now the IMF is a group you use to defend you position? Are they the truthful angels or the lying devils? You seems to waver in your position. No, I’m basing my point on having been there for work reasons, most recently last April for three weeks. I’d take the opinion of the people who lives there over yours, no offence intended. By the way, you seem to have forgotten that Ireland has reentered the bond-market in recent months, at high but sustainable rates, those rates brought about by the stability gained from participating in the bail-out system. It’s no quick fix, but it is a few more baby steps towards economic responsibility. A default or burning bondhonders would dump us back down into market untrustworthiness. So I still don’t buy your arguments.
Pandering to what people would like thats all, you know for a fact that if they got into government in the morning they wouldn’t be able to follow through as reality would hit them!
Like the reality of dealing with the British government and Ian Paisley .The thing about people that want change but want to keep the regime who dont want change is the ruination of this country.Crazy mentality.
No, we don’t know that for a fact, that’s called an assumption. What we do know for a fact is, as they stated on the record, they’ll outline how this proposal would balance the books via spending and taxation measures in the pre-budget submission.
“This would be funded from the National Pension Reserve Fund, European Investment Bank, incentivised investment from the private pension sector”
Comment of the week Damocles!
No way, Chris, too open to dispute.
“incentivised investment from the private pension sector”
hands of my pension you grubby chancers. I select where that money gets invested, not you.
Rónán. Do you manage your own investment fund. The vast majority of Irish pensions are managed by 3rd parties. You must be one of the few in the country that decides where there pension money goes.
Incentives like this are common across much of Europe. Indeed that are considered economic norms in most of the developed world. Please do tell why you think we should stick with the unemployment generating policies of FG and FF in this regard.
Government projects would have to be advertised on extenders.gov.ie and these would be available to all euro member companies. All jobs created not necessarily Irish ones. No current way to avoid that! Unless they plan on hiring all these people as Public Servants in state companies to do state projects. ?
ssshhhh Vincent, how dare you point out the massive flaws in their plan……
I also notice that a substantial chunk goes on the A5 – a road in the North.
While I respect Sinn Fein’s position on national unity, this would do next to nothing to create jobs in the state. It would be moderately beneficial to businesses operating around Letterkenny and Buncrana, but that’s about it.
Prioritizing the M20 (Cork-Limerick) would do a lot more to reduce unemployment.
“Examining the use of tax credits for sourcing local Irish produced materials”
Hold on a second til I exam that for them…. (opens EU rule book to first page) …
‘ Rule #1 : An open market with the free movement of goods across national boarders’
… That’s a no to that one so. Next…
It’ll be the slogan, “Irish jobs for Irish people”, and if you can’t see what’s lurking in the shadows of that one then…..
Chris, it should take about an hour and a half to drive from Cork to Limerick on the N20, how much faster would it be if that was turned into a motorway? About half an hour?
@Damocles The main problem is the lack of capacity for commercial traffic. This hinders both trade between the two cities and access to the country’s second port. There’s also a safety issue when you have somewhere like Rourke’s Cross, which has seen 20 accidents over a decade, a couple of which were fatal; Rathduff hasn’t a much better record.
Personally, I’d put a spur off the M8 at Mitchelstown, meaning half the distance of motorway to be built, but that’s a different discussion.
What about … I was going to ask if it was commercial what about using the existing rail infrastructure to greater effect throughout the country, but then there isn’t a direct rail link from Cork to Limerick. Fuggedaboutit …
“No current way to avoid that!” One way that would give Irish businesses an advantage would be to insist upon the implementation of official language schemes/plans for tenders i.e. businesses/organisations in receipt of state funding should be able to provide those services in both of the State’s official languages. Just a thought.
€13bn / 150,000 jobs
= €86,666 spent per job created!
= massive waste of our money!!
Everyone who comes off the dole and into tax paying work saves the state around 20K, so it would pay for itself in 4 1/2 years, which isn’t a bad return at all. That is, if it’s a realistic plan and I have serious doubts there.
€65bn given by FG and FF to failed banks and €47bn to failed developers.
€112bn/0 jobs
= criminal waste of our money that has been condemned by pretty much every leading economist of the left and right across the globe, even the IMF.
David. People like Kenny and Cowen etc will get the plaudits, the directorships and consultancy roles in years to come. When you finish college you will have to get the plane to another country while the rest of us too old and settled to leave will wait for the next time FG or FF destroy the country.
David seeing as a lot of these projects are capital projects it means that the €86k that you are moaning about will be spread out over a number of years. That means that 150,000 will at least have a decent quality of life rather than having to queue up each week for their dole and try to figure out who they are going to pay their bills.
I think there is roads, factories, broadband and other infrastructure gained with that €13 billion as well as 150000 jobs David
Repeating what’s mentioned above already “read the article”!
When the Irish people decide to throw their political tribalism overboard and start pulling together, then, and only then will we see progress. FF, FG and Labor ALL sat around and watched Ireland go down the tubes. They have done NOTHING to turn it around. They are rewarding the very cronies who brought on the collapse. I say, f* them and lets see what SF can do. You’re not going to cure your ills with more of the same, boys.
“Oh, it’s money we haven’t got!” (wringing hands and rending robes). That’s right. You don’t have it. The bankers do. Let’s get some back from those f*ers.
Seeing what SF can do is the last thing we need, socialism doesn’t work. Nice idea but total pants. What we meed to do first is reduce public spending, reduce the number of TDs and Senators plus reduce public expenses. Then tighten up on fraud and debt laws. Support individual who set up own businesses. Btw, beet is dead here.
Pie in the sky!
Better than the shite at your feet.
Just think we should listen to any new points of view no matter who comes up with them , anything is better than what enda and cronies are coming up with
Anything is better?
With all due respect thats a very foolish way to vote other partys into power, SF have 0% experience with ever running a country and their plan above is only pandering to what people would like.
It has very little basis in reality and the vast majority of it would never see the light of day
We should, but equally we should treat the SF plan with as much scepticism as we treat any government plan. Objectivity goes both ways, that’s why it’s called objectivity…
Barry “SF have 0% experience with ever running a country” Try buying a history book!
Barry likes things the way the are.
Weapons manufacturing!
Typical populist nonsense
It might be funded by the ink cartridge reserves.
I’ll reserve judgement on its viability until its costed but they all seem very reasonable and i particularly agree with investment into broadband infrastructure- vital to any modern economy.
I keep missing the point of broadband. How is a faster broadband connection going to help the economy? Are you unable to buy stuff online now? Are there data centers waiting to be built in Roscommon? Farmers can’t buy manure online? This is a nice-to-have item rather than a mission critical investment.
Here’s how to create growth and jobs for FREEEEE!
Cut taxes. Stop spending so much of OUR fecking money. Stop legislating small businesses and entrepreneurs to death. Stop trying to regulate every single aspect of life in this country.
That’s my gift to you, Sinn Fein. Gratis.
I live in fear for my pension. Hope to retire before I’m 100 years old!
Summer rainfalls in Ireland are increasing each year. Continuous rain causes disease and rot to beet.
This is their top jobs initiative…have SF even researched the impact of weather on production. The top producers France, Germany etc are not getting same levels of wet weather as us. Might be a good idea but I’d like to see the analysis.
Have to disagree there auld stock.
The Beet industry proposal is less than 3% of the jobs mentioned. It can hardly be described as their main one.
The factory is for the South East. The sunniest and driest part of the country. It has very large tracts of phenomenal land that would easily produce top quality beet yields and sugar contents. It would have the weather, the aerated soil but reasonable rainfall required.
Beet in Ireland was shut down by Coughlan and the Govt. to facilitate the unlocking of its land bank for developers. It was not an economic decision, it was about rewarding friends. It cost thousands of people their jobs and removed a rewarding plank for thousands of farming families but in the FF school of thought it was a case of “fuc7 em.” The EU court of auditors pointed this out when they questioned why the Irish Govt. closed a profitable industry , one where prices have nearly doubled since closure across Europe.
This proposal has been looked at and endorsed by Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Irish Sugar industry refinery group.
Lol @JFinnegan2012. Beet processing in Ireland was shut down because it was only economically viable in this country through massive subsidies. Importing sugar from third world countries is far more sensible – not to mention it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling helping Caribbean farmers with cool accents instead of Carlow farmers with annoying accents.
“This proposal has been looked at and endorsed by Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Irish Sugar industry refinery group.” REALLY? WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY? The sugar industry lobby group thinks its a good idea? And who’s paying PwC for their opinion, I wonder? Lolleroons.
Oh and another thing – maybe prices increased for sugar beet because we weren’t growing so much of the fecking useless stuff? And, if they devote thousands of acres of good land to growing sugar beet – what do you think will happen to food prices? Look at the mess the US has made mandating the growing of corn for bioethanol production. Intervention in a market ALWAYS has unintended and negative consequences.
Sugar is at a 30 year high and can be produced here as an economically sustainable venture. It was a viable industry when it was closed down, the demand that we walked away from was picked up by sugar factories in France and Germany, both of whom produce at a greater cost than us.
If you think that Sugar beet production in Ireland will change food prices in anyway then you obviously haven’t even the remotest idea about food production or its scale or what drives it.
It’s great that SF have started crapping money because with that anonymous 13billion we could close the budget gap with a billion to spare…
You do realise that 18 billion is being handed to bondholders this year alone? I think I’ve found your ‘anonymous’ 13 billion.
What’s most bizzare about this plan is that most of this is similar to what the Government have already suggested in their NewEra programme. Spending on water infrastructure, next generation broadband, regeneration in major urban areas, primary care centres and schools. And yet the Government were criticised for being unrealistic when they suggested these measures.
About the only new things in the infrastucture part of the plan are the A5 (a Northern Ireland project),the renewal of beet production (which wasn’t cost effective back in the 80s) and the creation of a bio-refiney (the purpose of which I don’t understand).
So if the Government’s infrastucture plans are unrealistic can somebody explain how they are suddenly more realistic simply because it’s Sinn Fein who are now making these proposals.
While some of the other measure might be worth investigation I have my doubts about others.
- I don’t know how many self-employed people could afford to pay PRSI at PAYE rates to be honest.
- Capping ulility prices sounds like a great idea but who is going to pick up the cost exactly if prices soar.
- Examing use of tax credit for Irish sourced materials is most like illegal under EU law.
- Who exactly is going to pay for the fuel rebate to transport firms?
- What exactly is the “job retention scheme” and how does it operate.
The other major flaw in the plan is fairly obvious because all infrastructure spending has to be tendered across the EU and must be allocated in a clear manner to show no bias in the selection of local or national companies. Therefore there is no guarantee that the amount of jobs created would actually match up to the figures suggested. There is also a little bit of a grey area with regard to the source of the funding for the plan which would need to be explain in a lot more detail.
People clearly haven’t stopped for 1 second to see that massive massive holes in the plan by SF,
Capping utility’s is frankly insane, so oil goes up and utility’s are capped. Is the government going to pay the short fall to all the electric company’s? After all you can’t just cap the price with one as that would be anti-competitive so you have to cap it with all of them.
Pipe dream stuff, a 4th year secondary student can see the holes in that suggestion.
Try to give favorable tax rates to Irish products only is illegal and can’t be done, so thats that out the window.
This is basic stuff guys,
The way the job retention scheme worked in Germany, they created a legal and financial framework that encouraged employers to put staff on 3 or 4 day weeks instead of laying some off.
It kept unemployment down, which saved the government there money. And while many saw their income reduced, few ended up out of work. Plus, employers retained skilled staff.
Barry I said we should listen to anyone who has a plan SF ,, don’t like g Adams but some of the younger one coming seem to have a idea . I not a SF supporter
We should listen to anyone who has a good plan. It’s fair enough for people to look at this to see if it’s a good plan or not.
There are good ideas in it (e.g. the job retention one, which was one that worked in Germany and should have been done here in 2008/9), but there are bad ones as well (e.g. spending 400m on a road that isn’t in this state when we have so many roads of our own that need improving and when our trains run at half the speed of everyone else’s).
At least its a plan to create jobs as opposed to NO clue whatsoever by this present government.
Oh please, not the ‘at least they have suggested an idea’ excuse.
SF are trying to legitimise themselves and leave their bloody criminal past behind.
We expect a lot more from the paid opposition than this lame plan. It isn’t a transition year school project. It’s the future of the country.
If your plan is selling sugar, then tell us more.
This whole press release is so weak you’d have been better off keeping your ‘effort at useful suggestions list’ at zero.
Really, this is as good as it gets from SF?
Last time I checked, the Government is doing pretty well at bringing jobs into the country.
Big obvious problem is we don’t have an appropriately trained and experienced workforce.
I’d like to see more publicity about how we are retraining the unemployed. That is our big problem.
Most people will think this is great Sinn Fein is good these are the same people that voted for Fine Gael their all the bloody same you have farmers or teachers half them not even educated you need business people running the country not a yup peen of a teacher with all his advisors telling him what to do.o Leary be great but abit extreme he would problaly sell everything and tell eu to F off.but look at the great hype over the independents f. k ing useless mick Wallace and tree hugging Barrett and Ming f. king hell
Use some punctuation please.
Good plan by SF.
Ok, I’m saying nothing until they release real details. Except for saying this, of course. :-)
Let’s not be too critical, Gerry has a proven record of organising “volunteers”, so we can at least look too low labour costs and we can’t ignore the fine tradition of collecting donations. We may not even need to go to the NPF after a couple of Celtic games and a weekend in Boston.
I would love for the Cork Docklands regeneration to go ahead, but the thought of pursuing property based growth scares me, especially when there is so much overhang in the property market.
Love to see sein Fein in power,they seem to care about the ordinary person.
Raymond, beware the wolf…. Sinn Fein are playing the populist card. Think for a while about them and you will see it.
sinn fein creating jobs ….what like the time they came around during the elections and when i explained my husband was an unemployed electrician one of them said he’d a nicker for him. great we said. husband did it that evening and they never paid him!!!! shower of ****
Shame on you and your husband for doing nixers in the first place, it’s people like you who claim the dole and do a few days here and there that pillage this country! We’ll never get out if the debt if you don’t pay your taxes to the troika.
Did the bomb not detonate ?
Tara. Did the bomb not detonate?
This is a ‘build white elephants’ plan.
Lots of activity while we spend the 13.5 billion on European contractors hired to do the work.
Why not spend far less on educating people to do valuable things in the world economy from Ireland?
The biggest flaw we have in any recovery plan is only a tiny % of the population is currently capable of participating profitably in the global economy right now.
Best we focus on how we can bring revenue into the country, not just build wasteful infrastructure to look like we are doing something.
Sinn Fein launches its jobs plan ?????
Nice idea but pure fantasy. These guys haven’t a clue….
Launching their childish plan is still better than launching rockets.
Surely they could put their demolition skills to good use obliterating all the ghost estates.
Hopefully they could wait until the women and children have left the building first.
We are in the economic mess we are in these days simply because we permitted commercial banks to adopt the role of the speculator on markets with our savings and now we face a situation where the priority for banks is not lending/facilitating trade, but rather using any bailout to shore up their balance sheets. The SF plan does warrant some serious attention as indeed should any political response – the objective is jobs, job creation and supporting those with drive to create business. I do fear that incessant state meddling and buraucracy will ultimately starve this initiative as quite frankly there’s not too many civil servants either experienced in running a business or worried where the next rent payment is coming from. We will have to work our way out of this mess and become as self-sufficient as possible. Certainly the nation has a standing in IT/computers but what about mines, farming, fishing as opposed to over-emphasis on services and endeless wastage of grants to bufoon consultants? Granted some of the “comedy” here slating SF from the south is rather amusing and laughable. The real fools have been the lot of us swalling the endless baloney from FF and FG not to mention Labour – all of whom presiding over this mess and did nothing. 15 years ago I voted SDLP up north despite agreeing with the overal SF aim of the party opposing the methodology, to end the charade of politics up north where the national economy has been fractured for 90 years. If those of us that lived during those times can give SF a chance then perhaps we should all at least try. Bear in mind it was another “gunman” in Sean Lemass that dragged us away from Dev’s dancing at the crossroads as our parents all boared the boat to England or the States. SF and other political parties might do well to look to nanotechnology and production of ethanol split between corn/sugard feedstocks – production in other words, not just services and god knows the standing of the country to borrow on international markets is no worse than Britain’s if people can see beyond the headline. Ireland is not a basket case, far from yet just paying the price for voting in headless chickens like that former “property speculator” TD in Wicklow now complaining about banks. Should we not love the rogue not the complete gombeen? Well done SF – could have strangled you years ago in the context of poorly constructed economic argument – this is better – keep it up. As for the Eurosceptic argument – what is it? Sure in or out makes no difference even if the currency collapses – back to the punt or the DM – no big shakes there likely at all. The issue we all should face is never to be so stupid as a society again to think what goes up will never come down.
Northern Ireland is a different country they do things differently there.
I hope that people will see through this nonsense. From a workers point of view, the only thing the Sinn Fein plan puts forward is 5000 ‘potential’ jobs. If this was feasible, there would be private industry doing it already. The rest of it is just a rehash of the nonsense that we have heard for the last few few years (some might say over the last few decades or since the state was founded). Where Sinn Fein are absolutely wrong is their inclination, along with Joe Higgins, to stifle business by people who want to create wealth for themselves and in doing so, provide employment for others I don’t mean that by paying people poorly, but, to listen to SF and Joe, you would think that that is the only way that the well off people in Ireland survive. If you disagree with people who start and employ people at a fair wage, then this country is truly finished. Think about it, would you give up a job as an employee, to take a risk (albeit, well rewarded if it works out), take out a potentially crippling loan, for Sinn Fein to say, we will take that. Or would you say that I could work hard, employ people, but not in Ireland?
Thank you for the above. Sensible comment.
Hmmm least some party is trying to get things moving. Why is there no talk about our Natural Resources? Oil and Gas that is there…. Just a thought. Leave Cork docklands well alone,waste of money as there is no need for the scale of development
After suffering civil war politics for the entire history of our state, which has brought us to the brink of ruin twice in my lifetime and has wrecked the future of a generation, I’m ready to give a party a chance who were born from oppression in a two tier society, just as we find ourselves in now. They’re getting my vote come next election.
I remember dessie Ellis on the frontline a while back saying the way to get people working was to get those on fas to finish off the the ghost housing estates- I nearly fell off the chair in knots of laughter !!!!!
Won’t be much worse quality of craftsmanship than the crap the construction industry ‘built’ in the boom.
It is one sector I have little sympathy for when you see the rubbish that plasters, carpenters and bricklayers were prepared to do, in the name of a quick buck. If that is part of the national skillset, we should be ashamed of it and the monumental disasters haunting the landscape.
I heard SF & their mates are good at robbin’ banks………………
God almighty the amount of blue shirt waffle on here! Gone f*ck off back to England and join your conservatives buddies over there and take fianna fail and their supporters with you!
Yes we all know there is no money in the pot! BUT why is there no money left?
BECAUSE FF/FG/LAB ARE GIVING IT AWAY!!!!!
The political system in Ireland is corrupt! From the top to the bottom – they constantly attack the vunerable and protect the elite.
Some of you idiots where pointing oit the value of the rich to the economy – cop on- they pay little or no tax and even the foreign companies are swindling us out of millions in tax because of tax loopholes created by previous governments!
Ireland is not down the tubes its in the gutter trying to climb its way back up the drainpipe but the amount of shite the government is pouring down it will prevent it from getting back up!!!
Maybe they should fund t with all the northern rock sterling they have buried all over the country #WHOARETHEYFOOLING
very good plan. Hopefully now eircom can catch up!!!!
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