ECONOMY:IRELAND IS "swimming against the tide" but is still making ground economically, Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has said.
Speaking ahead of his address to the MacGill Summer School in Glenties on the theme of achieving growth in a time of austerity, the Minister insisted Ireland was doing just that.
Difficult decisions were being made concerning the targets currently being set by the troika. “We are achieving growth. Last year the Irish economy grew by about 1.4 per cent for the first time in four years. It will grow again this year, albeit modest growth,” he said.
“The Irish economy is – despite all of the painful changes that we have to make in terms of budgetary corrections and debt restructuring – managing to grow. Unfortunately the growth that we’ve managed to achieve over the past two years has not resulted in a significant jobs dividend.”
That was because it was being driven by export-led growth, because the Irish economy had become more competitive.
Mr Coveney said Ireland was once more an attractive platform for international business.
The IDA last year had created 13,000 jobs – a net 6,000 jobs, given job losses.
Unemployment figures had stabilised to between 14 and 15 per cent, but that was “not good enough”.
Mr Coveney said Ireland’s options were more limited than those of other countries because of our financial assistance programme.
The Government could not therefore simply spend money to create stimulus as easily as a lot of other countries and economies could do. But it had managed to find “clever ways” of putting stimulus in place on an off-balance sheet basis, which had been approved by the troika.
Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said the action plan on jobs promised by the Government seemed to be “an exercise in ticking boxes”. The State had the capacity to introduce a substantial Government-led stimulus, backed by the private sector, she said. But the Government’s recent €2.5 billion stimulus package, as announced, could only be described as a drop in the ocean.