THE IDEAS Campaign, an online effort to find ways out of the economic downturn, received more than 5,000 suggestions before its deadline of Tuesday night.
The campaign’s director, Aileen O’Toole, said a total of 5,284 ideas were submitted to www.ideascampaign.ie, which was launched four weeks ago. She said many of the ideas submitted related to education, tourism and environmental initiatives. “Creativity and resourcefulness are in our DNA as a nation,” she said.
Ms O’Toole said the ideas would be reviewed by personnel from four prominent accountancy firms.
She said the best ideas would then be evaluated by an advisory group, which includes Microsoft Ireland chief executive Paul Rellis, Riverdance producer Moya Doherty, Dragons’ Den judge Seán Gallagher and former IDA chief executive Kieran McGowan.
She said an action plan for Government, community groups and individuals would be produced this month, and dialogue would continue with the many thousands of citizens who had shown an interest in the campaign.
The Ideas Campaign’s website was visited almost 48,000 times over the last four weeks. Ms O’Toole said there was considerable international interest in the campaign in the last week, representing some 17 per cent of traffic to the website. Three out of four ideas logged from overseas came from people born in Ireland.
Samples of ideas
- Give all EU citizens free travel in Ireland for a trial period of three months to see whether it helps the tourism sector.
- I propose that there are no more Lotto “rollovers” during this recession.
If there is no winner of the weekly jackpot the money should be allocated to a specific government department to reduce the budget deficit.
- Can we put our unemployed construction workers to build flood defences for our towns and cities and soak-aways and ditches for our farm land, housing and roads?
- Low-cost self-esteem boost: support for economically/socially disadvantaged people to train for and run a marathon.
- Ireland is currently ranked among the worst in Europe at learning foreign languages . . . Schools should try and organise after-school classes in languages such as Chinese, Spanish, and French, etc.
- Why not build a four-lane bridge from Ireland to Wales? The building creates jobs; the maintenance creates jobs; there would be jobs in customs and security on both sides . . . The toll would be €12 and €10 of that is divided evenly between countries.
- I suggest that we introduce a Courtesy Charter for Business. The Courtesy Charter would be a declaration of values and principles such as paying invoices on time, fair employment, green environment, social conscience etc.
