Smart Economy - Politics

LACK OF DEFINITION:Smart economy - the phrase is an oxymoron and has already become a cliché. If one were of a cynical cast of mind, the phrase would be deemed as the perfect response of the political class to the economic quagmire in which the State has landed itself in.

A cursory trawl through news statements of all the political parties shows the phrase has been used hundreds of times in the past year, especially since the launch of the Government’s framework plan for economic recovery last December.

The statement from Taoiseach Brian Cowen, when announcing the Innovation Taskforce, gave ample illustration of how much of a buzz phrase it has become. “We need to think smart, work smart, and be smart in order to build our future. The Ireland of the future will be a smart, high-value, export-led economy.”

But is there real substance behind the phrase and what does it mean from a political perspective? While Green Party minister, Eamon Ryan, has been evangelising the smart economy since the general election, the concept got its first real outing at the launch of the framework document.

This was criticised for its lack of detail, over-reliance on generalisation and aspiration, and its failure to tackle some of the more immediate problems facing the economy.

The framework got bad press and was roundly criticised. It was hampered by lousy timing, giving the impression it had been drafted in haste. The public’s expectation was that this would be the silver bullet that would fix the collapse in public finance. It could never do that.Yet, there was enough in it to indicate broad Government thinking on what a ‘smart economy’ is. And it was backed up by a €500 million innovation fund to stimulate job creation in these areas.

Politically, the smart economy encompasses a couple of strands of thought. Broadly speaking, it is focused on making Ireland a place for world-leading research-focused companies, including indigenous enterprises. The Government has identified those as being in sectors where Ireland is already a strong player, such as biomedicals, pharmaceuticals, business and financial services, and cutting-edge digital technology.

The other dimension to the notion of a smart economy is that it will be green, clean and sustainable. So, we have seen everything from smart meters, to wind energy, tidal energy, better public transport, to the use of technology and GPS (global positioning satellites) to overcome commuting problems. The Greens claim that over half the jobs created so far this year have been green and ‘smart jobs’, both in the ESB and under the grant scheme that incentivises householders to improve their home insulation. The biggest development has been a Government paper, published earlier this summer, promoting the technological aspects of the smart economy framework. The paper promoted six actions, which would create a claimed 35,000 jobs.

These include upgrades for fibre-optic communication networks; making Ireland a centre for energy-efficient data centres. It also proposed that Ireland could become the international centre for internet content, using an Irish-based brokerage for buying and selling digital data.

The paper restates the Government’s commitment to smart electricity networks, the provision of smart meters to every home within five years, and electric vehicles.

The other smart technology extends the internet to include information coming from sensors. One use is ‘work flow’ where cameras and traffic sensors allow commuters to know when traffic is heaviest. The other project identified was Smart Bay which aims to locate a marine RD facility in Galway Bay. Sensors in the water facilitate environmental research and energy exploration.

So at least the smart economy is now beginning to be defined, but some of the technology is unproven. The prospect of 35,000 jobs from the six proposals is highly aspirational. And you suspect that the wider smart economy plan is the same: highly aspirational.