Too many state agencies involved
ECONOMIC recovery in the Mid West is being suffocated by an overkill of agencies and reports, claims leading UL economist, Dr Stephen Kinsella.
He argues that organisations such as Shannon Development, Enterprise Ireland, the Limerick City and County Enterprise Boards, the Mid-Western Jobs Task Force, IDA, FAS, Failte Ireland, Mid West Regional Authority, Tourism Ireland and Regeneration, have funds diverted to them for a multiplicity of purposes.
Dr Kinsella says there are altogether too many state agencies, often leading to a crossover of roles.
“The Irish solution to any problem is to set up a committee, and it doesn’t work”.
He points out that reports are occasionally commissioned and often left to rest on shelves, and despite all the hype and promises, nothing has been achieved since the closure of the Dell manufacturing plant.
He expressed fears that the €22.8 million Dell Globalisation fund will be squandered: “I don’t think this money will be well spent. I think we will see a cack-handed approach to the division of funds as every agency in the region will expect a cut”.
The economist believes that the fund should be the responsibility of one agency: “It should be the job of one person to ensure that the money is spent correctly and gets tangible results.
“We will have five to 10 agencies all looking for small slices, or a large organisation like FÁS hoovering it up, and it’s simply not the case that FAS create jobs… the results speak for themselves”.
According to Dr Kinsella, the desire to tackle serious problems is diluted by the abundance of state agencies in the Mid West: “As far as I know, everyone of them has a different mandate and I’m not aware of a common set of metrics”.
He feels there is massive difference between what politicians and people see as progress: “Politicians perceive a problem, set up a commission and have them write up a report. In relation to Dell, at a political level the job is done… yet no jobs have been created”.
He is adamant that If one person is given responsibility for the globalisation fund, their performance should be measured.
“We have to have transparency and accountability. There should be a target of cost per job created and if these targets are not reached and sufficient jobs are not created, there should be sanctions”.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael TD for Limerick East, Kieran O’Donnell, agreed that one body should be responsible for distributing the Dell fund: “I would agree with making one person accountable as long as it doesn’t create another layer of bureaucracy”.
However, he has blamed the government for failing to implement strategies which have been compiled for Limerick and the Mid West.
He declared: “The recommendations of the Mid Western Jobs Taskforce are lying on a shelf in government buildings similar to the Regeneration document, launched with great fanfare in 2007”.
He will be seeking a debate on Regeneration when the Dail resumes on January 19. “I will be bringing up all of these matters with the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste as the people in the regeneration areas are in a state of limbo”.
He is angry with the way Regeneration has been handled politically, and feels it should be fast-tracked.
“You can’t have a situation where you give people in these areas false hope, and I think they are now losing trust in the process itself”.
Deputy O’Donnell feels that Limerick has become the forgotten city as nothing has been done to rectify massive job losses over the past year.
He said “We are losing a lot in Limerick and gaining very little, not one single IDA backed job has been created in Limerick since Dell announced the closure of their manufacturing facility last year”.
The Fine Gael TD believes immediate action needs to be taken to address chronic unemployment figures in Limerick: “Immediate government intervention is required as the increase in unemployment here is well above the national average”.
