Ireland - the future of the economy

Tipp Man

I've been thinking recently about our economy, where its come from and where its going to and how best to get there and there are really some fundamental questions that we need to ask ourselves.

Firstly government income, what do people see as a sustainable income for the government, this year i think we are talking in the region of 31.5bn, next year is expected to be even lower. however we are in the middle of a big recession (depression??) so this is surely under the long term income that the government could expect. Would people expect say 37bn to be a realistic figure for annual governemnt income?

Secondly government expenditure, this year is in the order of 51bn. Now bearing in mind my first point that i believe 37bn is our long term income amount, how are we going to loose 14bn from our governments expenditure and still have a reasonable level of public service etc? Can it even be done??

Thirdly, the wider economy. We have nearly 450k people unemployed, in what areas do people feel we can get these people into employment? Where can Ireland find a niche which will make us attractive to investment? Do we even want to pigeon hole ourselves like that??

Fourthly the indigenous economy, do we produce anything anymore?? Is there an area where Ireland could excel thereby improving employment and exports, i.e. green enviromnent, agriculture, IT?? Can we create new Irish companies which can go on to become large global players, CRH, Ryanair etc have done their bit, where is the next one coming from?? Are we supportive enough of our own companies?? Personally i believe there is very little support for small Irish companies

How do people see the Irish economy developing over the next 5-10 years?? And how do you think we will get there??

PS I don't want to start discussing the Public Sector or their wages, lets keep it to the general economy if we can

jimmmy

Excellent constructive post. We have to ask ourselves what can we be good at. There are not too many home grown Irish companies doing well internationally, unfortunately. As you say CRH, Ryanair etc have done their bit. Off the top of my head, I think food, water , tourism etc are areas our fresh green little island should have a natural advantage at, and will have to be exploited more.

Zynks

Great post, and i intend to contribute one I have some spare time to put down a few thoughts. Thanks!

MaceFace

And here is a magnificent presentation from a very smart dude to help you on your way:

Rob67

Considering that I already know where this is going i.e. another anti- Public Sector tirade, I'll try and blunt your arguments before someone has an embolism trying to out-tirade each other.

On the Public side:

Reduce Public Pay by a reasonable amount.

Reduce the level of Jobseeker allowance payments not the benefit. (That's not going to go down well).

Reduce the administrative side of the public in already identified areas.

Adopt more flexible approaches day to day operations and increase interoperability between departments.

Public Sector Employees to be given the option to pay into a private pension fund in lieu of the public version and remove the pension levy/tax in these cases and reduce for the remainder who opt for a Public Sector pension, remove the requirement for non-permanent staff to pay the levy/tax.

Use technology to replace the paper orientated system (this has been hugely successful in the Defence Forces).

Remove the Quango's, most particularly those that have sister organisations with similar tasks.

Persons on long term Jobseekers allowance to be placed into work schemes that benefit provision of services (care homes, schools etc) and only in cases where appropriate skills/upskilling is available, on the full allowance.


On the Private side:
Because the Private sector has no public accountability and is not as regulated as the Public Sector it would be nigh impossible to quantify what can be done by this sector to assist the economy.

At this juncture, I have to admit defeat and can only recommend the following:

Employers to be required to reduce profits before reducing staff/pay (don't deny it, it is happening).

Reduce the minimum wage.

Private Sector companies tendering for government contracts to be required to offer substantial reductions to the government and to provide verifiable accounts on product/service costs to that company before signing. Companies found to be profiteering at the state's expense to be excluded from tendering further contracts for a period of ten years.

I'm not able to come up with anything else at the moment as I haven't enough information on the inner workings of most Private Sector jobs so I'm not going to postulate, unlike some who postulate on how the Public Sector operates.

ardmacha

Would people expect say 37bn to be a realistic figure for annual governemnt income?

This is about 27.5% of 2010 GNP. Do you expect to be able to run a modern European country on this figure, especially as there will be a 4% or 5% of it paid in debt service, or do you expect a further 25% decline in GNP?

Rob67

ardmacha wrote: »

This is about 27.5% of 2010 GNP. Do you expect to be able to run a modern European country on this figure, especially as there will be a 4% or 5% of it paid in debt service, or do you expect a further 25% decline in GNP?

Missed that bit, well done! Slipping up in my old age...

Tipp Man

ardmacha wrote: »

This is about 27.5% of 2010 GNP. Do you expect to be able to run a modern European country on this figure, especially as there will be a 4% or 5% of it paid in debt service, or do you expect a further 25% decline in GNP?

No no, I was only putting it out there as a potential number (although we have no idea what 2010 GNP will be). I think traditionally the government income as a %age of GNP has been running between 35-37% for the past 10-15 years (http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/publications/other/BES2008.pdf)

However this year we would expect GNP of what 140 bn (maybe lower but 70bn to Q2 09) but government income is only going to be what 31.5bn so clearly the long term trend has been broken this year, quite dramatically as well.

So is this just a blip for this year or will a new long term trend develop whereby a much smaller %age of GNP is reflected in government income?? Or am i way off?

I personally would think that GNP will certainly continue to fall next year and possibly into 2011. What do you think??

Tipp Man

Sorry forgot to mention for comparitive sake that the %age of Government current expenditure to GNP has been from 37.6% in 96 down to 29% in 2000 and up to 35.2% in 08. But obviously it will be much higher this year and is currently running at about 43.5%, a rate not seen since the 80's

batperson

Things will need to get worse in order to get better. Lower wages/benefits etc thus driving down the cost of living to at least the euro average.


The only job creation news today is for a gambling company - not a great omen.

Future can be two things:

1. Brave creative thinking and political and economic reform followed by embarking on for example a new green energy centre of excellence in research and development striving to be the leader in the world, creating jobs and other virtuous cycles and the celtic tiger can return and everyone will be happy ( in a capitalist sense at least;)).

2. Sit back and watch it crumble back to 1930s america depression

Amhran Nua

Tipp Man wrote: »

Firstly government income, what do people see as a sustainable income for the government, this year i think we are talking in the region of 31.5bn, next year is expected to be even lower. however we are in the middle of a big recession (depression??) so this is surely under the long term income that the government could expect.

You can pretty much assume that the GDP will stay low, since much of it over the last ten years was based on construction, and that isn't coming back anytime soon.

jimmmy wrote: »

Excellent constructive post. We have to ask ourselves what can we be good at. There are not too many home grown Irish companies doing well internationally, unfortunately. As you say CRH, Ryanair etc have done their bit. Off the top of my head, I think food, water , tourism etc are areas our fresh green little island should have a natural advantage at, and will have to be exploited more.

Anywhere Irish people go abroad they tend to be fairly successful though, my own brother is one of the senior pipeline engineers at Shell in Texas. I don't think sticking to an agricultural basis for the economy (itself the product of a severely flawed national vison on the part of Dev) will be of any benefit to Ireland, we can do whatever we set our minds to, in my opinion.

ei.sdraob

Ireland should follow Singapore'ean model

they have China and Japan practically on doorstep and manage to compete effectively

one of the reasons for success is the "enterprenureal" attitude of the people there, something that should be taught here at an early age (along with science), btw I know people who live there, they learn C++ programming in school while we learn useless subjects like Irish, and yes they have excellent English for most part

not to mention all the hidden surcharges faced by small companies here, like the corpo tax joke


also

pass a law where anyone from anywhere in world who sets up a business here, hires X numbers of locals and pays at least Y in corpo tax is granted citizenship after Z years, this would be extremely attractive for american business people who have to pay tax anywhere in the world while they hold american citizenship

ill put it this way, wed rather have 12% tax income on something than nothing


oh and finally setup an national investment fund, where people can invest in and the money would go to sponsor local ventures, infrastructure etc (not pensions, welfare and PS), this way people can save/invest in worthwhile project, not the american stockmarket or housing

Amhran Nua

ei.sdraob wrote: »

pass a law where anyone from anywhere in world who sets up a business here, hires X numbers of locals and pays at least Y in corpo tax is granted citizenship after Z years, this would be extremely attractive for american business people who have to pay tax anywhere in the world while they hold american citizenship

Wasn't there something on the books that you could buy Irish citizenship for a million euros or similar?

mrgaa1

population of UK is approx 61.4m with a public spend of 631billion stg
population of Ireland is approx 4.5m with a public spend of 51bn (OP)

ratio: UK almost 1:10.2
ireland 1:11.3

So we'd need to be looking at something in the order of 45-47bn if we were to follow the UK. I thought our public spend was 60 odd billion. In any case the usual items will have to change - wages, tax system etc...

the future can be bright if credit was available and confidence was restored. There are numerous people in this country who are achievers and the Irish have always succeeded throughout the world. I'd like to know what the outcome was of the think-tank that happened a few months ago where all the Irish business leaders/achievers from across the world came together. Do it again in the new year?

ei.sdraob

Amhran Nua wrote: »

Wasn't there something on the books that you could buy Irish citizenship for a million euros or similar?

that was the case until the 90s then one could no longer buy citizenship, some small countries make a nice bit of money this way (few of the carribean islands like St. Kitts and Nevis or Dominica) in return for citizenship and visa free travel to US/EU and few others you pay 250K and have to invest in indigenous businesses like sugar plantations or buy and restore colonial property

ardmacha

So is this just a blip for this year or will a new long term trend develop whereby a much smaller %age of GNP is reflected in government income??

If the government has a fairly standard tax system then they will raise a broadly similar proportion of tax as other countries. This means things like an annual property tax rather than just taxing people when they sell houses and having most workers rather than half in the tax net. They may also need things like 3rd level fees that were part of income in the 1990s.

Amhran Nua

ardmacha wrote: »

If the government has a fairly standard tax system then they will raise a broadly similar proportion of tax as other countries. This means things like an annual property tax rather than just taxing people when they sell houses and having most workers rather than half in the tax net. They may also need things like 3rd level fees that were part of income in the 1990s.

As far as total taxation versus GDP goes we are comparable to countries like the UK and Germany, maybe a few points less which can be explained by our much lower corporate tax rates.

ardmacha

As far as total taxation versus GDP goes we are comparable to countries like the UK and Germany

We were similar, owing to massive stamp duty. Since that is gone, and hopefully will stay gone, we need the type of taxes they have in these countries in order to continue to raise the same proportion of GNP.

Darragh29

jimmmy wrote: »

Excellent constructive post. We have to ask ourselves what can we be good at. There are not too many home grown Irish companies doing well internationally, unfortunately. As you say CRH, Ryanair etc have done their bit. Off the top of my head, I think food, water , tourism etc are areas our fresh green little island should have a natural advantage at, and will have to be exploited more.

Here's the biggest problem we have in Ireland now Jimmmy... Our government doesn't understand that every company you have referred to above, started off as a small business operation.

This government do not understand a single thing about how jobs are actually created. It's like watching some big wealthy pr*ck walking into a poker casino and throwing money at the pot, he doesn't know how to play cards, but he walks into the casino, strolls up to the most expensive table in the place and starts throwing his Daddy's money at the pot and everyone thinks he's the big man.

The smart money however would be on the little guy minding his own business at the smaller table who is slowly buy steadily building up his chips.

The only way this government think that jobs can be created are through the IDA, who travel abroad and try to spend a lot of money convincing big multinational businesses to locate in Ireland. This is grand, but some of the big businesses that were convinced to come here, for example Dell, have decided to leave at the first opportunity.

A wiser strategic decision would have been to not just "up-skill" the Irish workforce when the resources were there to do so, but also "up-entrepreneur" the workforce, so that the people of this country, who are highly educated but seem to lack the self belief that is needed for starting up a business, could have been given the support and assistance that is needed to create small businesses in Ireland. Instead though, we've been throwing money at the pot, creating jobs the easy way, by paying someone else to do the heavy lifting for us...

And as you can see here, we've reaped exactly what we've sown... Now we have the big businesses fleeing our shores, we are all looking around going, "hang on a minute, WHERE ARE OUR JOBS????"...

Our jobs are here and under our noses, all we have to do is discover them... When the required leadership arrives in leinster House, then we'll see jobs being created. And for the avoidance of doubt, I think we are many years away from this happening, FF, FG, Labour, they are all completely and utterly clueless when it comes to job creation.

Amhran Nua

ardmacha wrote: »

We were similar, owing to massive stamp duty. Since that is gone, and hopefully will stay gone, we need the type of taxes they have in these countries in order to continue to raise the same proportion of GNP.

The GDP has dropped in the same period however.

OMD

ardmacha wrote: »

If the government has a fairly standard tax system then they will raise a broadly similar proportion of tax as other countries. This means things like an annual property tax rather than just taxing people when they sell houses and having most workers rather than half in the tax net. They may also need things like 3rd level fees that were part of income in the 1990s.

The problem is that only effects the income side. We also need to spend like other countries. That means reducing public service pay (I know, I know), cut social welfare, cut pensions, etc

OMD

Darragh29 wrote: »

A wiser strategic decision would have been to not just "up-skill" the Irish workforce when the resources were there to do so, but also "up-entrepreneur" the workforce, so that the people of this country, who are highly educated but seem to lack the self belief that is needed for starting up a business, could have been given the support and assistance that is needed to create small businesses in Ireland. Instead though, we've been throwing money at the pot, creating jobs the easy way, by paying someone else to do the heavy lifting for us...

And as you can see here, we've reaped exactly what we've sown... Now we have the big businesses fleeing our shores, we are all looking around going, "hang on a minute, WHERE ARE OUR JOBS????"...

Our jobs are here and under our noses, all we have to do is discover them... When the required leadership arrives in leinster House, then we'll see jobs being created. And for the avoidance of doubt, I think we are many years away from this happening, FF, FG, Labour, they are all completely and utterly clueless when it comes to job creation.

What do you believe should have been done/done in the future in terms of concrete policy?

North_West_Art

This has just been announced
http://oceanfm.ie/news/2009/11/11/11-million-euro-exploration-venture-for-south-donegal/

And Im afraid that this is old news... €400 billion in resources off the Iirsh coast, and we are struggling to make up €4 billion in December
http://www.wsm.ie/story/2187

Ireland could have a potentially very bright future if we put power in the right hands

Darragh29

OMD wrote: »

What do you believe should have been done/done in the future in terms of concrete policy?

Well here's my 2 cents worth and this has been my experience, not just my opinion I have to say...

(1) Task one must be to identify the people in Ireland who are able to create new business opportunities. The people who have new business ideas, we need to identify these people and get in contact with them.

(2) We need to accept the reality that the banking industry is not interested in lending to, or asisting these people...

(3) We need to accept the reality that the County Enterprise Boards, which are a collection of politically appointed people around the country, are not interested in assisting these people....

(4) We need to set up a new state body, that is dedicated to entrepreneurship, the support of entrepreneurship and nothing else. The first thing this body should do as a matter of policy, is decide to reach out to people who want to start up a business, no matter what the idea is, the person proposing it should be invited in to present the idea in front of a competent body of people who are in a position to either assist the person with developing the idea or else explain in logical and rational terms, why the idea should not be pursued.

I know people are going to come back and say, "The County Enterprise Boards do that and Enterprise Ireland do that"... Let me tell you from my experience, that the state is currently opposing people who want to start a business.

People who want to start a business, they have a drive to get things done, the idea of applying to a CEB and maybe a year later getting somewhere or not getting somewhere with them is absolutely infuriating to the mindset that wants to just get things done.

I applied to my local CEB (County Enterprise Board), for support for a business, some 12 months later, I'm still trying to just get a meeting with them to present my idea!!! I first made contact with them 12 months ago, and some 12 months and dozens of correspondence later, I still haven't been given the opportunity to actually stand up with my business idea and say, "here's what I'm about"... And this didn't happen because they were busy or had a backlog of work, they are just literally eaten through with beaurocracy, red tape and endless politcal interference. They are in fact opposing small business creation.

The CEO of the local County Enterprise Board in my area was previously a FAS manager, you couldn't make it up!

The notion that people with a public sector background can lead the drive towards job creation and should be given cushy, highly paid public sector boardroom positions, we need to take a chainsaw to this mentality.

The only people leading state organisations or agencies that are mandated to support enterprise should be people who have earned a track record for creating jobs.

With the right people in the right places in this country, we would be well on the way to sorting out this whole economic mess...

The people at the bottom of the pyramid, the foot soldiers (and I'm one of them), are in position and are ready willing and able to create jobs.

The people at the layer above them in the pyramid need to be replaced, (these are the people running the CEB's who are responsible for supporting business creation), because they are cossetted public sector people who are in the wrong job, and the people at the very top of the organisation, the government, need to be replaced because they have catastrophically failed to provide the necessary leadership to push job creation. Leadership must come from the top here, we have no leadership so we have no job creation.

Even without proper political leadership, if the people in the middle layer of the pyramid were able to step up to the national effort, we might just start getting somewhere, but unfortunately these people in my experience are lazy, overpaid and couldn't care less about how many jobs they help create, they are protected and that's all that matters.

OMD

Darragh29 wrote: »

Well here's my 2 cents worth and this has been my experience, not just my opinion I have to say...

(1) Task one must be to identify the people in Ireland who are able to create new business opportunities. The people who have new business ideas, we need to identify these people and get in contact with them.

(2) We need to accept the reality that the banking industry is not interested in lending to, or asisting these people...

(3) We need to accept the reality that the County Enterprise Boards, which are a collection of politically appointed people around the country, are not interested in assisting these people....

(4) We need to set up a new state body, that is dedicated to entrepreneurship, the support of entrepreneurship and nothing else. The first thing this body should do as a matter of policy, is decide to reach out to people who want to start up a business, no matter what the idea is, the person proposing it should be invited in to present the idea in front of a competent body of people who are in a position to either assist the person with developing the idea or else explain in logical and rational terms, why the idea should not be pursued.

I know people are going to come back and say, "The County Enterprise Boards do that and Enterprise Ireland do that"... Let me tell you from my experience, that the state is currently opposing people who want to start a business.

People who want to start a business, they have a drive to get things done, the idea of applying to a CEB and maybe a year later getting somewhere or not getting somewhere with them is absolutely infuriating to the mindset that wants to just get things done.

I applied to my local CEB (County Enterprise Board), for support for a business, some 12 months later, I'm still trying to just get a meeting with them to present my idea!!! I first made contact with them 12 months ago, and some 12 months and dozens of correspondence later, I still haven't been given the opportunity to actually stand up with my business idea and say, "here's what I'm about"... And this didn't happen because they were busy or had a backlog of work, they are just literally eaten through with beaurocracy, red tape and endless politcal interference. They are in fact opposing small business creation.

The CEO of the local County Enterprise Board in my area was previously a FAS manager, you couldn't make it up!

The notion that people with a public sector background can lead the drive towards job creation and should be given cushy, highly paid public sector boardroom positions, we need to take a chainsaw to this mentality.

The only people leading state organisations or agencies that are mandated to support enterprise should be people who have earned a track record for creating jobs.

With the right people in the right places in this country, we would be well on the way to sorting out this whole economic mess...

The people at the bottom of the pyramid, the foot soldiers (and I'm one of them), are in position and are ready willing and able to create jobs.

The people at the layer above them in the pyramid need to be replaced, (these are the people running the CEB's who are responsible for supporting business creation), because they are cossetted public sector people who are in the wrong job, and the people at the very top of the organisation, the government, need to be replaced because they have catastrophically failed to provide the necessary leadership to push job creation. Leadership must come from the top here, we have no leadership so we have no job creation.

Even without proper political leadership, if the people in the middle layer of the pyramid were able to step up to the national effort, we might just start getting somewhere, but unfortunately these people in my experience are lazy, overpaid and couldn't care less about how many jobs they help create, they are protected and that's all that matters.

But to be honest all you have said there is replace County Enterprise Board with something better. The rest is just political party type speech. I was looking for something more concrete.

MaceFace

OMD wrote: »

But to be honest all you have said there is replace County Enterprise Board with something better. The rest is just political party type speech. I was looking for something more concrete.

Agreed and I don't think this is the place your going to get expert advise.
However, I think:

• World class broadband (on par with S Korea)
• Real competition in the electricity market (with private operators)
• Reduce cost of doing business across the board:
• reduce all wages which unfortunately means minumum wage
• reduce council rates
• remove upward only rent reviews

If you want industries:

• Electricity Production through wave/wind
• IT
• Finance

The important thing though is that if we can reduce the cost of doing business here, we will have many of the manufacturing jobs come back as we have massive incentives for American companies to base themselves here: Native English language, In the Euro and TimeZone

I think some of these will require a significant reworking of the government (local and national) and I can not see that happen without massive organised public pressure.

Darragh29

OMD wrote: »

But to be honest all you have said there is replace County Enterprise Board with something better. The rest is just political party type speech. I was looking for something more concrete.

I'm associated with no political party whatsoever. The next 2 years need to be about the creation of jobs jobs and more jobs. The reality is that all business start off as one and two person operations. I've had the infuriating experience of starting up businesses in this state, the mindset of those that are paid by the state to support you, is worse than useless.

This is where I think we need to start, it's just common sense, how you see a politcal messge or political overtures in my last post, I can't get my head around.

Maybe you should take a task upon yourself, make contact with your local CEB (County Enterprise Board), and see the reception you get. Nobody should be the least bit surprised that we have an unemployment crisis when the state is hopelessly incapable of providing support for those that are in a position to create jobs. There's nothing "political" in having this view, it's just the reality of the situation from someone who has experienced it.

Think about this for a minute, right now we are pumping money into FAS, to take people off the live register, so we are training around 60,000 people right now for jobs that don't exist??? Where is the logic in that??? It will all come back to the same thing, where are the jobs that we need, where are they going to come from??? Who are the people who will create them???

Answer that one for me...

nesf

Tipp Man wrote: »

No no, I was only putting it out there as a potential number (although we have no idea what 2010 GNP will be). I think traditionally the government income as a %age of GNP has been running between 35-37% for the past 10-15 years (http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/publications/other/BES2008.pdf)

However this year we would expect GNP of what 140 bn (maybe lower but 70bn to Q2 09) but government income is only going to be what 31.5bn so clearly the long term trend has been broken this year, quite dramatically as well.

So is this just a blip for this year or will a new long term trend develop whereby a much smaller %age of GNP is reflected in government income?? Or am i way off?

I personally would think that GNP will certainly continue to fall next year and possibly into 2011. What do you think??

From a pure economic PoV, our GNP was inflated due to a bubble you can't except similar growth rates post recession so extrapolating from previous % of GNP trends won't work. Government spending is sticky, it's much harder to reduce it than raise it so the after-effects of a boom fueled spending spree will last longer than would be "logical" for a given level of GNP. This poses the problem where we'll have to look at increasing our tax take as a % of GNP to compensate which given the current economic climate won't be a good thing for GNP growth in the short term.

The Government can't stick to a % of GNP as tax model, the tax rate will be defined by the speed at which we can close the deficit meaning that most likely we'll see an increase in that % over the short term with knock on negative effects on our potential growth (but there's no other option politically I think).

All the above is off the top of my head though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

leninbenjamin

Darragh29 wrote: »

The next 2 years need to be about the creation of jobs jobs and more jobs.

this is the most important thing that can be said about our current situation, yet for all the bickering between factions over limiting the damage the obvious bloody things get ignored.

I see three main things that I want to see us do:

1) lower the cost of living in this country through current expenditure cuts. Decreasing public sector pay is actually bad for the private sector too because it decreases the disposable income in the economy, yet it has to be done simply because we can't sustain current levels at all.

2) bring back University fees. Put the rest of the savings into R&D and performance related scholarships. Specifically i'd like to see a 1 for 1 program introduced whereby our government would match any investment in 3rd level institutions in this country by businesses.

3) prioritise capital spending. good infrastructure saves money for the private industry and generally makes for a more attractive investment. It also puts more money into the economy than current expenditure imo (current expenditure tends to go out very fast through imports, capital at least tends to create additional jobs that will still filter the money around). It will also create jobs temporarily, revealing pressure on the welfare and retraining services.

gurramok

mrgaa1 wrote: »

population of UK is approx 61.4m with a public spend of 631billion stg
population of Ireland is approx 4.5m with a public spend of 51bn (OP)

ratio: UK almost 1:10.2
ireland 1:11.3

So we'd need to be looking at something in the order of 45-47bn if we were to follow the UK. I thought our public spend was 60 odd billion. In any case the usual items will have to change - wages, tax system etc...

the future can be bright if credit was available and confidence was restored. There are numerous people in this country who are achievers and the Irish have always succeeded throughout the world. I'd like to know what the outcome was of the think-tank that happened a few months ago where all the Irish business leaders/achievers from across the world came together. Do it again in the new year?

I'm afraid its worse, the UK are trying to slash public spending too as they have a huge budget deficit for other reasons.

segaBOY

Pharmaceuticals account for almost 50% of our exports.



However we are heavily based in manufacturing which can be done in cheaper economies as they gain more knowledge (e.g. Singapore).

With the announcement that GSK are shutting their facility in Sligo it's a sign of what is to come.

If Ireland can't reduce it's cost base (let's face it competing with the likes of the Far East is next to impossible for manufacturing) we will seriously need to use this industry (which is one of the better off in a recession) to better effect or else face losing the whole lot.

We need to attract R and D. A big part of this is supplying top class science graduates. Why not allow free fees for science courses in colleges? It would be an incentive to go down that route and ultimately it would spur greater competition for these courses leaving the best performers receiving the places. This should contribute to our goal of top class researchers instead of just leaving a free for all in third level over the past few years.