Gilmore sets out jobs stall
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore has pledged to use €500m of taxpayers’ money to get people out of the dole queues.
The cash would be used for a raft of initiatives including a new trade czar to boost exports.
Irish investment teams would be set up in Brazil, Russia, India and China - four of the world’s fast-growing economies – to secure greater business links, under Labour’s election promises.
Mr Gilmore said Ireland’s casino economy had to be replaced with an investment economy that will promote innovation and encourage start-ups and expansion.
“We are already seeing the re-emergence of emigration as a direct result of our failure to create jobs at home,” said Mr Gilmore.
“Ireland cannot afford to lose another generation of educated and talented young people as we did in the 1980s.
“Unemployment and job creation has to receive the priority that it deserves.”
The trade czar would work with a new Trade Council to rally all State agencies towards securing more business for Ireland abroad, Labour proposes.
Mr Gilmore said his party would also set up an innovation agency to create investment in technology research as well as a network of technology research centres, such as the Tyndall Centre in University College Cork.
The Labour leader said the country cannot afford the multibillion-euro cost every year – through social welfare payments and lost taxes – of hundreds of thousands of people signing on the dole.
“This is simply not sustainable,” he said.
