Phil Hogan
Question:114 Mr. Hogan asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the action she will take to improve economic competitiveness arising from Forfás and National Competitiveness Council reports. [29944/03]
Written Answers. - Economic Competitiveness.
The National Competitiveness Council's Annual Competitiveness Report 2003 and the Competitiveness Challenge 2003 report were published on 1 December 2003. These reports provide an extremely useful insight into Ireland's current competitiveness status as they assist in highlighting key areas to be addressed in meeting the challenges to Irelands international competitiveness. These reports have been given immediate attention by the Government both in the context of this year's budget and through the Government's commitment to consider and give effect to the NCC recommendations.
The National Competitiveness Council stated in both its recently published reports that Ireland's immediate priority must be to slow the growth of prices and costs. The Government is committed to enhancing Ireland's competitiveness status and an essential component of this is to provide a business environment with low inflation. This will help stabilise firms' costs and provide them with a solid competitive business environment from which they can successfully compete on both domestic and international markets. Ireland's inflation rate fell to 2.3% during October. However, we cannot afford to be complacent. We will continue to further reduce our inflation rate bringing it into line with our EU partners and other competitors. In this context, budget 2004 demonstrated that keeping inflation low was a key priority. The Government has avoided inflation-fuelling taxes in line with the requests of the National Competitiveness Council. The budget, furthermore, reflects the Government's commitment to support job creation and investment in Ireland. We have introduced a series of new measures so that the tax system further supports initiative, risk-taking and innovation. These new measures include the introduction of a research and development tax credit, the removal of stamp duty on the registration of patents and the extension and improvement of the business expansion and seed capital schemes.
The NCC last week presented us with a set of key priority areas on which we need to monitor progress. At its meeting on 25 November the Government discussed both reports of the National Competitiveness Council. It was agreed at this meeting that the Government would consider Ireland's competitiveness status every six months and this would also include discussing the recommendations in both National Competitiveness Council reports. The Government also agreed to set up a monitoring process to consider and track progress on the implementation of the council's recommendations.