Jobs focus must be on all sectors

At a time of unprecedented levels of unemployment and the absence to date of any kind of a comprehensive Government response to job creation, the first priority among the many urgent priorities there are must be to halt the numbers losing their jobs and try to stimulate the economy. The jobs crisis afflicting Ireland is particularly affecting the younger generation of workers, with 80 per cent of all jobs lost hitting those under 30 years of age. With over 100,000 already having left these shores and as many as 65,000 more young people ready to join them, the country is once again facing a major brain drain, whereby the highly skilled graduates we need to help rebuild our shattered economy are being forced to seek employment opportunities overseas. Some efforts are at last being made with a high-level group led by one of the country's top industrialists being established last week to begin work on a five-year plan to identify areas for investment in the new smart economy, as well as Taoiseach Brian Cowen's announcement this week of a five-year overseas investment plan aimed at generating up to 300,000 jobs, promoting overseas investment, foreign trade and tourism. While these are evidence of some action finally being taken, these type of initiatives should have happened two years ago when it was becoming clear the scale of the economic crisis we were facing. And while the smart economy will be a vital driver of hoped-for economic prosperity in the future, Government efforts to stimulate jobs cannot exclusively focus on the 'high end' to the exclusion of other equally important areas of job creation. Far from the world of wafer fabrication, photonics and nanotechnology, in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) up and down the country, the situation remains as difficult as ever and there is no sign of the Government cavalry cresting the ridge on the horizon. SMEs remain a crucial backbone of the national economy, employing many tens of thousands of people the length and breadth of the land, and many are vulnerable and in need of assistance to keep their doors open right now. Glen Dimplex chief executive Sean O'Driscoll earlier this month referred to the "mistake" of abandoning traditional hands-on engineering and manufacturing in favour of promoting 'smart economy jobs'. He noted that countries leading the way out of recession like China and Germany all have a strong manufacturing base. "We need to go back to making things again, to real engineering, not financial engineering. We need to export our products, not our jobs," said Mr O'Driscoll. An economy based on a number of high-end jobs to the exclusion of other sectors of more traditional manufacturing and services is not likely to be sustainable, so resources must also go into the indigenous export-driven manufacturing sector. This may not lead to instant success but it will, in the longer term, help towards rebalancing the Irish economy and making it more sustainable. The end game for a strategy that is based on a relatively low number of highly paid jobs will be mass unemployment for the remainder of workers, In the boom, many allowed themselves to undervalue traditional manufacturing by being lured into 'get rich quick' sectors build on shifting sands at the same time as abandoning traditional factory jobs. While the Government believes the smart economy is the way forward, it must remember to give equal priority to indigenous industries supplying goods and services to the domestic economy which must also be central to our economic recovery. Quite apart from any jobs stimulii the Government can give, one of the crucial areas that still needs to improve is access to bank credit. While ISME is reporting that there has been an improvement among small and medium enterprises in securing finance in the last quarter, it adds that still almost half the businesses that applied for credit in the last three months have been refused. As a result, many have had to downsize and reduce employment. Clearly, this uncertainty over the availability of credit to finance and maintain projects is doing significant damage to an already fragile economy.