Business chief puts Yes vote on Nice at top of her agenda

The upcoming referendum, insurance cover for business and the National Development Plan all feature on the agenda of Monica Leech, president of the ever-expanding Chambers of Commerce of Ireland, writes Conor Lally

Having spent more than a decade working in Germany Monica Leech says she "feels like a European". And as the new president of the Republic's largest business organisation, the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland (CCI), she intends to make known her allegiance to Europe in coming months by pushing for a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum on the Nice Treaty.

But closer to home she says there's lots to be done at CCI, an organisation that has doubled in size in a decade. To make as much progress as possible while in office, her first act as president of CCI has been to order an independent review of the organisation to find out what member chambers and companies really need from her group. She also intends to raise the profile of, and develop further, the nationwide network while lobbying on behalf of members on everything from the ever-increasing cost of insurance cover to the roll-out of the National Development Plan.

But for the moment, the Nice Treaty is very much to the fore among the staff at the CCI's new headquarters in Dublin's Merrion Square. A Yes vote, says Ms Leech, is vital to the State's continued prosperity and to the maintenance of its reputation as a place to do business.

"I left Ireland in the mid-1980s simply because the economic climate here was so depressed," she recalls. "I lived in Germany for much of that time and returned in the early 1990s. The difference in Ireland in that period of time really was quite amazing.

"I would loop the difference back to our membership of the EEC. The economic benefits that Europe has brought are all around us. For a start people are much better off than they were before. If you look at GDP, back when we joined the then EEC in 1972, our GDP per head of population was 58.8 per cent of the average of community members and today it is 111.7 per cent, so there have been huge benefits.

"But from a social fabric point of view, we have also made great strides as a country. We've come on hugely in the last decade on an equality basis, an education basis, social policy wise and environmentally. [EU membership] has been good for all of us and I feel the bigger the European state is, the better it is for all of us."

But what of the arguments that enlargement under Nice will erode EU subsidies and result in an "influx of cheap labour" from new member-states?

"When we entered, we were the poorest state and now we're the second wealthiest, so whether we vote to enlarge or not, you could argue that we've had our piece of the cake," she says. "The argument regarding cheap labour is a matter of proper controls being put in place and I think it's been used as a scare tactic, that you're going to have people somehow 'flooding in here' if we vote Yes.

"From a business point of view, it doesn't give out a stability message for future foreign investment in Ireland if we vote No and investors like to see stability. It would be a negative message to give out."

But the Nice Treaty aside there is much work to be done by CCI, says Ms Leech, who comes to the chambers' presidency via a career in communications and marketing.

She is managing director of Monica Leech Communications and is a former chief executive of Waterford Tourism, a pan-community initiative involving the public and private sectors through which she helped raise €1 million to brand Waterford as a tourism destination.

She is also a former marketing manager of the Jurys Hotel Group, former marketing executive at Waterford Local Radio and worked in marketing in Hamburg during her days spent living in Germany. She plans to call on all that experience to ensure the CCI's profile grows just as solidly as the organisation itself has in the last decade.

The CCI has just engaged National Competitiveness Council chairman Mr Brian Patterson to undertake an independent strategic review of the organisation. Mr Patterson will spend the next two months visiting member chambers and businesses, "big and small", to gauge how effectively the CCI has serviced the needs of members. His report and recommendations will be presented at the CCI's annual conference in November.

"Like all businesses, we have constantly to look at our customers, see if we're meeting their needs and find out how we can deliver better services, better value for money," says Ms Leech.

"We also need to grow the network and thankfully that is happening all the time, but we have to lift awareness of us as a dynamic business organisation, the largest business organisation in Ireland and one with a global brand - that is something we need to keep hammering home all the time."

She believes her organisation fills three main roles at present, namely lobbying on local and national issues, providing business services such as training and "certificates of origin" for goods as well as facilitating networking both at home and away. Similar to the manner in which member chambers in Ireland network, the CCI is part of a global network of chambers of commerce and regularly runs trade missions abroad to generate opportunities for members beyond Irish shores.

The most significant issue on which the CCI has been lobbying on a national level of late has been the ever-escalating cost of insurance cover for Irish firms. Ms Leech cites insurance as a prime example of how the CCI can work directly to improve the lot of its members.

"The insurance issue is huge at the moment. We have members who either find it difficult to get somebody to quote for them and when they do it's prohibitive you're talking about 100 per cent to 150 per cent increases, crazy stuff. We have been lobbying hard on this and we are delighted that a number of bodies have been set up to have a look at the issue and also about the fact the Tánaiste has taken the issue under her wing, which shows the importance she attaches to it."

The delivery of the National Development Plan is another thing she is keen to see the CCI focus its attention on in the months ahead. The group's annual conference in Westport, Co Mayo, in November will be dedicated to a mid-term review of the plan's implementation.

"Individual chambers around the country will be lobbying on different portions of the development plan and our role in that will be to keep close links with Government to establish what are the deadlines for various parts and when we know the progress of those we plan to lobby where and when the need arises," she says.

The CCI has also been vocal on benchmarking and believes it is imperative the Government is committed to ensuring that every penny paid out under benchmarking is wholly conditional on the introduction of sweeping changes in the public sector.

"If public sector employees wish to be treated like private sector employees, they must accept that it's not an á la carte menu from which they can choose the pay item but not any of the standard practices in terms of flexibility and continuous change in work practices which are commonplace in the private sector in order to survive."