Labour pins hopes on €500m jobs fund and efforts to boost trade

THE Labour Party kick started its election policy plans yesterday with proposals for a €500 million jobs fund and pledges to boost trade with emerging foreign economies.

Party leader Eamon Gilmore outlined plans for a trade and enterprise Tsar, as well as ways to support industries and Ireland’s ‘knowledge economy.’

He also confirmed that if put in power his party would renegotiate the EU-IMF deal and attempt to push back the deadline to reduce Ireland’s exchequer deficit by a year, to 2016.