Ireland urgently needs to establish a large and robust investment vehicle capable of initiating major projects and generating significant numbers of new jobs. That was the message from Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ general secretary David Begg at last week’s European Commission’s Dublin conference Post-troika: What next for Ireland?

Begg told delegates that, in the short-term, Ireland needs jobs and growth. “In the long-term we need a wholly new economic and social model. Recovery here is far from certain and remains highly contingent on developments in Europe. So in the short-term we should ultilise those levers over which we have control and create an investment vehicle with the capacity to kick start major infrastructural projects, generate jobs and boost growth. In the process, we could seriously enhance national competitiveness by upgrading our skills base and our infrastructure,” he said.

He said Ireland needed to “reimagine and rebuild ourselves along the lines of the successful northern European economies – the Nordic countries – and bring to an end our propensity to plunge into crisis every few decades.”

Unions

Separately, Mr Begg has said the Irish trade union movement must begin to reorganise and rebuild if it is to “recapture ground lost” during the years of crisis and the domination of market ideology.  Delivering a talk as part of the People’s College lecture series, he questioned whether the structure of the union movement allowed unions to deliver on core promises.

“At this point in time unions must adopt a defensive posture. Around the world, union organisations face hostility and, indeed, questioning of their relevance and very right to exist. This stems primarily from the free market ideology that has dominated economic and political life over recent decades.

“That trend has been exacerbated in the current crisis, where we have seen a determined effort to unwind all advances made by working people and undermine the role of trade unions. But that will not always be the case and we need to begin the process of reorganisation and rebuilding that is a necessary precursor to recapturing that lost ground in post-troika Ireland,” he said.