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.

Job creation was a priority, he said, as each person out of work was costing the exchequer around €20,000 in social welfare as well as uncollected taxes.

“When people talk about restoring the public finances, doing the various fiscal adjustments, the key to it is getting people back to work,” Mr Gilmore said at a Dublin press conference.

The party’s initiatives include boosting trade with the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC countries), a model already being pushed by the outgoing government.

Labour also plan to set up a number of technology research centres at a cost of between €10m and €20m each, similar to the Tyndall Centre in University College Cork.

Mr Gilmore was critical of the outgoing government’s concentration on the ‘smart economy’ and said instead it was the wider ‘knowledge economy’ that mattered. Sectors that should be targeted for development included the gaming industry, clean or green technology, food production, tourism as well as the retail sector, the party’s plans suggested.

Fine Gael rounded on the party plans last night though, claiming they failed to address underlying weaknesses in the economy like national infrastructure, high business costs and unnecessary government red tape.

FG enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton argued: “Labour places all its faith in raising €500m for a vague ‘jobs fund’ that will see politicians and state agencies seeking to influence for their own agendas.”

Meanwhile, Mr Gilmore said that the party would release details on Thursday about its proposal for an extra year for the EU/IMF deal to reduce Ireland’s exchequer deficit.

Under the bailout package the deadline for reaching a target deficit of 3% has already been extended from 2014 to 2015.

Labour had initially signed up to the deadline, but Mr Gilmore said it now wanted to move this to 2016.

The party wants to reduce cuts by €2 billion to €7bn for the next three years and then draw out the deal further.

“An adjustment over the next three years of €9bn poses huge risks for growth and recovery.”

Any renegotiation would also look at the issue of restructuring the banks and the interest rate being applied to the EU/IMF deal, added Mr Gilmore.