Vol. 506 No. 5
22 Mr. Perry asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment when the Government will establish a competitiveness review mechanism to deal with costs, competition, reparation and economic infrastructures. [15968/99]
The National Competitiveness Council was established in May 1997, thereby implementing one of the Government's commitments entered into in Partnership 2000. It comprises 11 member representatives of the social partners and reports to the Taoiseach on the main challenges facing the enterprise economy. It makes recommendations on how to improve Ireland's competitiveness, in particular in relation to items such as costs, competition policy and infrastructure, as mentioned by the Deputy.
The council's 1999 work plan concentrates on seven critical issues for public policy that are expected to make a major contribution to Ireland's medium-term competitiveness performance as follows: social cohesion, people, costs, infrastructure, e-commerce, competition and regulation, science and technology. The main output of the council during the first half of 1999 was the publication of the Annual Competitiveness Report 1999, a comprehensive and authoritative statistical assessment of the State's international competitiveness. A report on costs, to be published shortly, will identify the main cost factors for Irish industry and compare them with levels in key competitor countries, in particular the UK.
What will be done to monitor the policies and actions that impact on the competitiveness of the enterprise sector? How will the recommendations be brought into the public domain to improve job creation, particularly in the west where there is a huge imbalance in respect of infrastructure? E-commerce will add to competition costs, particularly in the retail sector. Perhaps the Minister will elaborate on this because of its serious implications for business.
The reports of the National Competitiveness Council are published. The most recent one, published on 5 May, dealt with issues such as skills, costs, the information society and telecommunications. Competitiveness is something we must constantly keep our eye on because it is never ending. The fact that a firm is competitive one day does not mean that in six months' time it will still be competitive. Clearly there are a number of key issues which include skills and availability of people. That is why the Government made £365 million available over the past two years to try to ramp up the number of people qualifying in key sectors of the economy where we were experiencing difficulties.
Another area is the whole issue of regulation. It is generally accepted that economies that are overregulated are anti-competitive, so we need effective regulation and it must be enforced, but we do not need over-regulation.
There are issues to do with taxation and the cost of labour. That impacts on budgetary policy. It has a key role to play in maintaining our competitiveness. The issue the Deputy has highlighted – infrastructure – is crucial to the capacity to make Ireland a hub for electronic commerce, and that in the main depends on developing the infrastructure and the regulatory and legal framework and having people with skills. Electronic commerce is a huge new growing area of business that we want to identify, and one that could help us maintain our competitiveness if we tap the potential it has for Ireland. At the moment the Americans have 80 per cent of the e-commerce market. It is estimated that it will be worth one trillion dollars annually by 2005. The Europeans have about 10 per cent of that market. We want Ireland to be the e-commerce hub of Europe, and the Government has put together a public-private partnership to develop that infrastructure and to bring in the players that can provide connectivity to the main centres in the world and, it is hoped, the main centres throughout the country to allow us to capture e-commerce projects.
In relation to competitiveness, we need to keep our eye constantly on the ball. There are some people who have suggested that, just as we gender-proof Government policies, we should competitiveness-proof them. That is something to which we should give consideration.
Will the Minister elaborate on a report of last week that the bulk of the jobs created in future years will be created on the east coast? That was a very disturbing statement. It is very worrying for the Border counties and the north-west because so few jobs have been created there.
It is true that the Border counties, the west, excluding Galway, and the midlands have not done as well as other parts of the country in relation to inward investment and that is largely because of the lack of appropriate infrastructure. The violence in Northern Ireland did not make the Border counties very attractive. The IDA, which is opening a new office in Cavan, has indicated that it will double the number of new jobs in those regions. The policy at the moment is to go for a larger number of small projects rather than a small number of larger projects. The emphasis is not on huge job numbers but rather on trying to get more projects which are suitable for the smaller provincial towns. That remains the policy. Some 72 per cent of new IDA jobs announced since this Government took office have been for outside the Dublin area, by which I mean outside the area from Drogheda to Bray and across to Kildare town. I accept that it still is the case that many of the expansions are in Dublin because many of the existing facilities are in Dublin. Certainly there has been a very big emphasis on trying to get projects into other areas and the big issue here is infrastructure. If we have appropriate infrastructure, we will attract investment.
In Drumshanbo today Leitrim Foods closed with the loss of 50 jobs. Will the Minister appoint a task force?
That is another question.
As the Deputy knows, I was in Drumshanbo on Sunday.
They still lost the jobs.
There was no connection.
