Galway Independent Column - 16 February 2011

Galway Chamber is delighted to welcome the news last Monday that Fidelity Investments is to create 100 new jobs in its Galway and Dublin offices. We’re particularly delighted that more than 75% of the jobs are earmarked for Fidelity’s offices here in Galway City in the Parkmore East Business Park.

Fidelity have said in their announcements today that one of the reasons they decided to create the extra jobs here is the quality of their Irish workforce and the level of research being carried out here at Irish universities.
Galway Chamber has always said that we need to create the optimum conditions to attract foreign direct investment to Galway and these are the conditions….our workforce, our third level colleges, our quality of life and our corporation tax rate of 12.5%. We would like to commend the work of the IDA here in Galway as well as the research programmes offered by our third level colleges. We all need to continue to support and to promote job creation whether its foreign direct investment or our own indigenous industries, at this time more than ever.

We have just sent our Galway Chamber Election Manifesto 2011 to all of the candidates in Galway West and East and it emphasises that jobs are what we desperately need in this country now. The upcoming election must be about jobs and what is proposed in terms of job creation. Again this week we ask all business people to question the candidates on their own or their parties policies and proposals for job creation.

In our Manifesto we have said on a national basis that Government must be more proactive in supporting and incentivising employers to take on new staff and retain existing staff in employment. We believe that it would be appropriate to aim for a target of 30,000 new jobs to be created and supported in 2011 and a net increase of 20,000 people at work – a target of unemployment below 10% by 2014.

We believe, as we have said in this column on many occasions that the SME sector is equally important as FDI, and job retention and creation in Retail/SME equally critical, therefore we need more innovative incentives for this sector on a par with those existing for Multi-National Companies. We believe Enterprise supports currently available through Enterprise Ireland should be extended to SME’s in the traditional indigenous non-exporting sectors.
Government must also support and incentivise employers to take on new staff through a reduction in the current rate of Employers PRSI and the expansion of the Employers Job (PRSI) Incentive Scheme to include all new employment created for a period of two years instead of the current twelve months

On a more local level we believe that there must be a Government commitment to utilise the educational skills base being created in Galway by NUI,Galway and GMIT, together with the skills and experience in the BioMedical, Healthcare and ICT Sectors to maximise job opportunities in the Region. This is evidenced each time we welcome new jobs either indigenous or through FDI to Galway, as recently as the Fidelity Investments announcement this week.

We have certain natural advantages as a result of our peripheral position and Government must commit resources to exploit the employment creation potential of the Marine Sector, Marine Research, Marine Biology, and Marine Tourism and to develop ‘Green’ energy technologies, Wind & Wave.

Back in 1974 in the Local Elections for Galway Borough Council, Galway Chamber fielded four candidates running on a business platform. This hasn’t happened since (although it might be a good idea to revisit it to make a strong business voice in City Hall), so it’s even more important that the ‘business’ questions be asked of all candidates to bring the concerns of our members to a local and national stage.