Martin makes strategy group's proposals his main priority

With only two years to the next election, the new Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment knows he has a limited amount of time to make his mark, writes John McManus.

The waiting area outside Micheál Martin's new office suite is decorated with photographs of his predecessors as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Members of Fianna Fáil are well represented, although two of them, Ray Burke and Pádraig Flynn, have subsequently fallen from grace.

One of them, however, stands out and, unsurprisingly, Mr Martin reaches for Seán Lemass when countering the suggestion that, given his left-of-centre image, the new Minister might not be as pro-enterprise as his predecessor Mary Harney, the Tánaiste and leader of the economically liberal Progressive Democrats.

So, given his reputation and the drubbing his party got in the local and European elections, is the new Minister likely to be more interested in community employment schemes than business expansion schemes?

Mr Martin smiles at the suggestion. "I am the voice of enterprise," he replies.

"Remember that Lemass was protectionist in the 1930s and a free trader in the 1960s. The point is that he had the intellectual openness, if you like, to watch what was happening around the globe and adapt quickly," he says.

"Historically, Fianna Fáil has been a party that has been pro enterprise and pro the creation of wealth. Equally, the other dimension to Fianna Fáil has been that, as we grew the cake, to ensure that we distributed that cake in a fair and even-handed manner," he continues.

In any case, ideological labels are less and less relevant, he argues. "I am pro investment in education. Does that make you left wing or right wing?" he asks rhetorically.

"It is clear from the enterprise agenda that we need to be investing in education, otherwise we are not going to have the type of competitive advantage that everybody in enterprise is saying we now need.

"There would have been a time when those who were pro pre-school education were dubbed soft left-of-centre people. Here we are today with the National Competitiveness Council telling us you had better invest in preschool education," he says.

The cutbacks in the Community Employment Scheme, brought in under his predecessor and blamed in part for Fianna Fáil's electoral reverse, will be revisited, he says, but it is not a core issue .

With an estimated two years to the next election, Mr Martin knows he has a limited amount of time to make an impact and has quickly identified three priorities for his term in office.

The main plank is the implementation of the recommendations of the Enterprise Strategy Group set up by his predecessor. The group, headed by Eoin O'Driscoll, reported in the summer and an interdepartmental working group is to report back to Mr Martin within weeks with recommendations aimed at countering a perceived weakness in Ireland's international sales and marketing capability and also research and development by indigenously owned firms.

"It is a critical piece of policy in the context of making sure that, in a decade's time, Ireland is competing internationally and that Irish enterprises are competing successfully internationally," says Mr Martin. "I see my role as creating both an institutional response to the report but also giving effect to its recommendations."

Mr Martin says he would like his period in office to be seen as the time when the Republic re-focuses its policy vis-à-vis indigenous enterprise.

"That will mean structural changes within the existing enterprise organisation and that will effect Enterprise Ireland.

"Clearly we need to introduce new skill sets to enable Enterprise Ireland and others meet the challenge ahead in terms of sales and marketing and R&D," Mr Martin says.

The next priority is to make further progress towards meeting the target of spending 3 per cent of GNP (gross national product) on domestic R&D, which was set under the EU's Lisbon Agenda.

It is familiar ground for Mr Martin, who was Minister for Education for a period in the first Fianna Fáil/PD administration between 1997 and 2001. During this period he introduced the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions, which revamped the way university research was funded. It was subsequently complemented by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), which was established by the Tánaiste.

Between them, the two programmes have a budget of more than €400 million.

Now that the structures are in place, the next step is to "demonstrate a linkage between a lot of what is going on now on the research front - in particular the SFI front - to outcomes in terms of applications to business, new products, new services and so forth," says Mr Martin.

The new Minister is also keen to get more money flowing through the system. The big challenge - and in many ways the holy grail of current industrial policy - is to get multinationals to establish research and development operations here.

"There is a challenge for me to pull the various strands together and bring a rational coherence to our research endeavour so that each sector, be it education through Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions or SFI, have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities," he says.

The third item on Mr Martin's agenda is to foster a stronger voice for consumers in policy making. It is another policy initiated by his predecessor, who established the Consumer Strategy Group earlier this year. This group will report back in the new year, but has already given the Minister some insight into their thinking.

"It may mean some institutional arrangements to give effect to the idea of having an ever constant, powerful role for consumers," he says, but he refused to be drawn on specifics.

Among the issues that he believes consumers should have a more direct say in are the cap on the size of out-of-town retail outlets and the Groceries Order, which bans below-cost selling. He is in favour of reviewing both policies, although retail outlets fall within the bailiwick of Mr Dick Roche, the newly minted Minister for the Environment.

"The Department [ of Enterprise] does have the role of acting as catalyst and putting issues to other Departments," explains Mr Martin.

One issue that he will impress on his colleagues - and which was highlighted by yesterday's report from the National Competitiveness Council - was the increasing regulatory burden on Irish business. Having an "agile government" is a key factor in winning inward investment and the Minster says he was struck by the NCC's finding that, within 12 months, the State's ranking in the world in terms of a supportive regulatory environment went from first to seventh.

"The ability to get things done for incoming industry was always one of our strengths and I would be worried if we lose that," he says.

But his concerns in this area do not extend to supporting calls for a rethink of the plan to decentralise the civil service. Not altogether surprising for a Minister from Cork.