THE GOVERNMENT HAS announced the details of its Action on Jobs Plan – but not all of the groups representing Ireland’s businesses are happy with the decision.
The Government said it “has set the ambition of making Ireland the best small country in Europe in which to do business by 2016, and the Action Plan for Jobs will seek to deliver on that”.
ISME has described the Government’s latest jobs plan announcement as another long fingered approach policy document, with no immediate action to address the ongoing jobs crisis.
It has called on the Government to “stop playing politics with people’s livelihoods” and to immediately implement effective policies to assist in job creation and retention.
According to its chief executive Mark Fielding, the policies need to be implemented immediately.
Here we have another announcement about an announcement about a jobs plan, where most of the initiatives will not be implemented for a number of months. With nearly half a million people signing on and thousands of businesses struggling, the time for action is now and not some time in the future.
Fielding provided the example of the State Loan Guarantee Scheme that was promised to be introduced months ago.
The Minister has announced that the scheme will not now be in place until the first quarter of 2012. This is crazy, as many enterprises will go out of business between now and then due to the lack of adequate finance.
He said the Government “needs to start taking its role more seriously and desist from participating in PR stunts”.
Speaking on Morning Ireland on RTÉ Radio this morning, Minister Richard Bruton said he was surprised at the accusations of delay and reannouncement.
He said the plan had a timelined delivery and that it was giving thousands of businesses access to finance they simply wouldn’t have had.
The Small Firms Association welcomed the announcement, but its director, Patricia Callan, noted that the absence of a specific fund amount is concerning.
She stated that a scheme with a significant scale in order of €400 million is needed and the Government needs to commit that it will meet the demand in full for guarantee funding from small businesses.
Callan also commented that whilst the guarantee fund was welcome, it would be a more expensive form of finance for small businesses:
as they would have to pay a risk premium and therefore it was essential that work still progressed on sorting out the fundamental problems in the banks in order to get to more normal lending patterns.
Chambers Ireland welcomed the Government’s commitment to deliver the plan but stressed that the monitoring group must include nominees from the private sector.
Chambers Ireland’s Chief Executive Ian Talbot said the imementation group charged with ensuring targets are achieved must strike a balance between the public and private sector.
It is vital that the group includes representatives from the private sector to ensure targets are met in what is essentially a scheme to boost private sector jobs and development.
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