The business of catch-all manifestos

There are many election pledges common to most, if not all, of the party manifestos.

IN SOME ways it is a strange election to be fighting on a pro-business agenda, when it was the regulation-free, pro-business agenda of the last administration that enabled the banking catastrophe that has caused so much misery. So the manifestos of most of the main parties tread a careful line, painting themselves as supporters of the humble small business and allies of the economy-saving exporter.

They do so on the assumption that they are engines of job creation, rather than tax-minimising profiteers or former exponents of the so-called Rip-Off Ireland phenomenon. Promising to reduce red tape, in this instance, presumably isn’t supposed to clash with the pledge to properly regulate and monitor the banking sector.

The overtures to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sound very familiar after a while. For Fianna Fáil, SMEs are the “bulwark” of the economy, while Labour’s manifesto plumps for “backbone”. There are also many election pledges common to most, if not all, of the manifestos. No party is against increasing training places or wants to cancel the grand retro-fit of Ireland. Most of the manifestos espouse the idea that, with a key tweak to how the country is marketed overseas, the tourists will come streaming in – with or without paying a €3 travel tax (which is, incidentally, one of Fine Gael’s targets for abolition).

Often the commitments made in the chapters devoted to business are at odds with the commitments made on resolving the unemployment crisis, most obviously in the case of Fine Gael’s drive to rid the public sector of “inefficiencies” that would result in the loss of 30,000 jobs, or, as business-owners might see it, the loss of 30,000 income-earning consumers.

Here, the party differs from Labour, whose finance spokeswoman Joan Burton spoke about the interdependence between the public and private sector at a briefing organised by the Trinity Business Alumni in Dublin this week.

“Do not pretend the private sector can thrive in this country while the public sector is in the doldrums,” she warned. “If this is a war between private and public, it will be a mutually assured destruction.”

Many of the proposals relating to “efficiencies” in the public sector will have knock-on effects for consumer-facing businesses such as retailers, who get a special mention in all five main manifestos.

Industry groups Retail Ireland and Retail Excellence Ireland will be happy with the stance that all the parties save Fianna Fáil have taken on the retrospective banning of upward-only rent reviews in leases. Fine Gael and the Green Party say they will test the legality of such a ban, while Sinn Féin and Labour make even stronger statement, promising it will enact its bill on the issue “as a matter of urgent priority”.

At the Trinity business briefing on Wednesday, however, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan rejected the suggestion by Burton that it was the apparatus of the State – in the guise of the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) – that was exacerbating the problem of high rents.

“Can we please leave Nama out of this?” he asked. “This is about people who made investment decisions and want to go back on them.”

It’s not surprising, in this context, that Retail Excellence Ireland has already called on its members and their employees to support both Fine Gael and Labour Party candidates on polling day.

Rents were one of the few day-to-day business issues to come up for discussion at the Trinity briefing, where the big-picture economic perma-crisis dominated proceedings. For example, Brian Hayes, deputy finance spokesman for Fine Gael, told the audience that “the most important thing to do after the election is to regain the international reputation of this country”.

Each of the parties has its own catchwords when it comes to plotting a course out of the mire. Fine Gael has the called New Economy and Recovery Authority (NewERA), Labour has its Strategic Investment Bank, Sinn Féin has Sales Ireland. It is a menu of grand-sounding economic stimulus, infrastructure investments and export drives that’s generally shy on detail.

Fianna Fáil’s manifesto though is arguably the worst offender in this regard, comprised almost entirely of targets without specifying the measures that will achieve them. For example, it notes it wants “to strengthen linkages and collaboration between foreign-owned and indigenous firms”, without stating how. Fine Gael has a similar desire, but backs it up by saying it will introduce a tax break for multinationals who mentor Irish-owned SMEs hoping to crack the export game.

Meanwhile, one of the most striking “pro-business” policies in the manifestos is Fine Gael’s gung-ho attitude to selling off State assets, which is countered by Labour’s commitment that it is “opposed to short-termist privatisation of key State assets”.

References to innovation, the byword for sounding up to speed about the technology sector, is littered throughout four of the five manifestos. But, judging from an election briefing held by business network Chambers Ireland on Monday, there are thousands of frustrated businesses out there with more prosaic matters on their mind than cloud computing or intellectual property “hubs”.

Embattled local companies, one county chamber chief executive noted, are afraid to pay their local authority rates in case payment is the final blow to their cashflow.

Unlike proposals to change existing lease contracts, driving down the local authority rates charged to businesses is a campaign free of moral hazard. At Chambers Ireland, deputy chief executive Seán Murphy was keen to stress the importance of going ahead with the recommendations of the Local Government Efficiency Review. “The key word is implementation,” he said. “We’ve had enough reports.”

After the election, however, there is always the possibility that the new government will find it easier to shift the burden of local authority funding to householders by introducing property taxes, rather than yielding gold from “waste audits”.

Within the social affairs chapters of the manifestos lie promises that will sound positive to most ears, but may be anathema to business interests. For example, Fine Gael says it will consider the idea of allowing fathers to take a share of their partners’ maternity leave – a European trend that is typically opposed by business groups. The Green Party’s lip-service to the data privacy of citizens will sound like a good idea to everyone except people who make money from the free-and-easy transfer of personal data.

Many more questions remain. Will introducing incentives on employers’ PRSI create jobs? How many of the businesses that claim to be “viable” will beat a path back to profit? And can any government afford to pay for the number of training places and apprenticeships needed to prevent a “lost generation”?