The View from IBEC

Danny McCoy of IBEC is today’s contributor to the Irish Times series: you can read his contribution here.

2 replies on “The View from IBEC”

His chutzpah is astounding: “yeah, we know that the last few months have been nothing but the bosses’ lobby on the TV looking for savings by firing public servants – The Most Important Issue Ever(tm), apparently – but give us a free couple of billion, willya?”.

And I suspect that his “the burdens must be shared by all” doesn’t mean what most would assume it means on first glance.

if you support businesses that are not designed to get through downturns then you will have to feed them until the next bull market makes them viable again, would it not be better to allow survival of the fittest then invest in new firms based on surviving companies business models in export oriented areas? There are hundreds of budding entrepreneurs out there who would jump at the opportunity to start a firm, but if we support existing companies (who would be their natural competitors) then the distortion is that of artificially helping inefficiency survive.

I sometimes feel that help is needed but mainly for those who did something right, the firm I work with didn’t get into debt, we haven’t fired anybody – and its in financial services! that means we have a viable business model and operation, helping our competitor merely weakens our position in the market when we should be gaining market share rightfully won due to our survival.

and then the perpetual question of course: where is the money going to come from? A BES scheme that can be offset rapidly? There is still a lot of private money not doing anything other than sitting in deposits. get rid of minimum wage, bring in property tax, allowances for training to get everybody skilled up, working dole – if you want the money you have to do some kind of activity in return. many ideas don’t require rocket scientists to execute them, get all of the ideas and pick the best [i know i don’t have the answers!]. is that unreasonable?

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