CART BEFORE HORSE IN IRELAND

Well, here we at the end of another week of carnage in the in the Irish jobs market. As predicted here and everywhere else twelve months ago, Dell walked this week, shedding 1900 direct jobs in Limerick with another possible 10,000 jobs in service providers that now longer have Dell with which to provide a service. That is on top of the thousands of other jobs that have quietly disappeared since last Monday over all sectors of Irish business without any fanfare. We are now losing 5,000 jobs per week – per week!
We have the Government agencies making the usual “task force for Limerick” bullshit statements as though as though a cavalcade of armed and dangerous job-creators would hit the city on Monday and replace 12,000 jobs before the end of the month – no questions asked! Mary “Dopey” Coughlan will spearhead the attack in one of her more insane outfits and all will be well.
Whom in Gods name do we all think we are fooling?
What company in its right mind - from any country- would consider locating in Ireland when you see what they have to put up with in terms of their cost base?
We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Greed has killed it – greed from government, workers, suppliers, local authorities, union bosses, company bosses, bankers, lawyers etc., etc. (Insert your own segment)
We have come through fifteen years of a property boom, not an economic boom.
That property boom has destroyed the cost base of the real economy – the one that actually makes things, products, tools, computers, food and drinks - real items exported for purposeful use.
The profits of the artificial property boom were funnelled into such magic creations as derivatives swaps, CFD’s, EFTs and other such financial products traded between small minorities of the economic partners. Very little went into real creation of structures and facilities to deal with the down turn, which inevitably would come just as day follows night.
The government long ago gave up the fight against rising costs. Sweetheart deals between unions and a weak employer’s body, IBEC, meant cost of labour in all industries went through the roof. Forklift drivers in Coca Cola were taking home a €1000 a week five years ago. Anybody with a truck licence could walk onto a building site five years and command a €1000 for a 39-hour working week. Cleaners were driving into Waterford Glass in BMWs – new BMWs, not the crappy 15-year old ones that you would see the Polish workers driving.
Bertie Ahern declared the pay talks a resounding success as crazy rises were awarded. All is well, he cried, as he struggled to walk to his car because of the buggering he got from the unions. Most rapes go unreported – a press release about this one was sent to the Rape Crisis Centre by courier.

Whilst taking in vast amounts of taxes through the front door during the boom, the government just threw it out the back door to the public service monolith, pet projects and criminal waste. They might as well have set fire to it all. They did set fire to it. There are little or no benefits evident from the boom by which we might attract business into Ireland.
We laughably talk about attracting high-end industry when we dismally produce graduates more interested in media studies than science or engineering. And even if we had the graduates to offer to the corporate visitors, how will they run their state-of-the-art businesses when our infrastructure is of third-world standard.
The most important item of infrastructure, (no, not Dundrum Shopping Centre!) a decent broadband system, is critical to attracting industry to Ireland. We have ignored the development of this vital tool to business to the eternal shame of our politicians and so-called policy thinkers. We are left with a country bereft of the most basic requirement of any industry considering locating in Ireland.
The IDA will talk the big talk in the corporate boardrooms of the USA and the Far East, but the reality is that without proper broadband capacity, the company jets will fly over Ireland to better places with lower cost and modern infrastructure.
They will not land in Ireland because they can’t.
Without broadband development, we built the glossy airport terminal but forgot the bloody runway!