Renua Launch: Lucinda’s 42-page document to revive Ireland
The document does not address mortgage arrears, the health service or education in any practical way.
Its only mention of justice is to declare the need for the gardaí and the courts to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to crime, and it has nothing specific on agriculture apart from recognising its crucial role in the recovering economy.
We’re told the “barbarism” inflicted on arts and culture needs to be reversed, that Europe needs reform and regeneration and that Ireland should have an “ethical foreign policy” but the details are lacking.
What the policies do encompass is a get-tough stance on incompetence in high office; a get-stuffed attitude towards the civil service and trade unions; and a get-active approach to self-starters and entrepreneurs.
The party is critical of government obsession with attracting foreign companies into the country and wants local entrepreneurship and self-employment to be a matter of “first choice rather than necessity”.
It wants to give self- employed people a tax allowance like all other workers, give them the choice to opt in to PRSI protections and reduce the higher rates of USC they pay.
It also proposes bypassing the banks and setting up an Irish Credit Network, owned and run by businesses, to provide peer-to-peer lending at manageable interest rates on a not-for-profit basis.
It wants to reduce capital gains tax from 33% to 20% for gains from investing in business while maintaining the higher rate for investment in property to deter speculation.
Employee share schemes are to be encouraged to give workers a stake in the companies they work for and enrolment in pension schemes is to be mandatory.
A system of small loans for low-income households to be set up via the main banks and credit unions to discourage reliance on moneylenders. Welfare payments are to be made through new basic bank accounts to require people who don’t bank to set up bank accounts and move away from cash-only transactions. Semi-states to be sold off.
Jobs for life to be replaced with jobs for those who fulfill the requirements of the post and the sack for those who don’t. Paper trails and form- filling is to be banished and replaced with online interaction between citizen and state in everything from medical card and Fair Deal applications to planning matters, agricultural grants and tax.
Country to be divided into single-seat constituencies with possible reduction in number of TDs and an open list system of candidate selection to be introduced and councillors will be full-time paid positions.
Minutes of Cabinet meetings are to be published within 48 hours except where national security is at risk.
No minister or Taoiseach is to be allowed serve more than two terms or eight years, whichever is shorter.
Secretary generals of government departments are to be subject to new laws making them personally accountable for mistakes and wrongdoing instead of being able to hide behind the “buck stops with the minister” clause.
An external ombudsman-type body will be used to hold ministers and senior officials to account for failings, with powers to censure, demote or sack. Oireachtas committees will have the power to call in this body to publicly subject an individual to these “accountability reviews”.
Abuse of political powers — such as favouritism in the distribution of National Lottery funding — to constitute an act of fraud, referrable to the DPP for criminal investigation and grounds for an automatic bye-election.
Budgets for government departments and agencies will switch from being annual allocations to rolling ones to stop the “use-it-or-lose it” mentality where managers spend for the sake of it as end of year approaches.
Secret ballots to be used in the election of the ceann comhairle of the Dáil and Seanad and of Oireachtas committee chairpersons.
There is a commitment to “hugely” increasing the stock of social housing, making it varied to suit all household types from single people and young couples to families with children and older people.
Investment and pension fund managers will be given land in return for building social housing to be managed by the State while providing long-term stable income streams to the fund managers in the form of rents. Rents will be maintained at “affordable” levels.
Maternity leave is to be replaced by parental leave to be shared between parents as they choose.
A tax credit will assist families with the cost of childcare and the State commits to providing community creche facilities over the long term to reduce the costs of childcare for all.
Property tax to be replaced with a system of local government funding that draws from two sources: a zoned land charge levied on households based on the amount of zoned land in an area divided by the number of households plus a site value charge.
A new measurement of quality of life is the minimum lifestyle standard — is to introduced plus ClearView, a system of measuring Government performance across all departments and agencies.
A Truth and Reconciliation Process to be set up to gather testimony by any victim of the mother and baby homes, forced adoption, unjustified commitals to mental institutions, electro-shock therapy administered without consent, neglect by the care system, cruelty in the educational system and other as yet unaddressed abuses.
