A REPORT drawn up by a group of 17 prominent business and public figures will be examined by the new Coalition but not in the immediate future because of other pressing priorities associated with the transition period, a Government source has said.
The Department of the Taoiseach and the office of Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said yesterday they had yet to receive the report from the Ireland First Group.
The report, published by The Irish Timesyesterday, claims that €14.4 billion in spending cuts and savings can be achieved and that the economy can achieve 5 per cent growth by 2015. It advocates that the State should sell airports, ports and the two main banks, Bank of Ireland and AIB.
The group was brought together by Rehab chief executive Angela Kerins and includes former Labour tánaiste Dick Spring, former European commissioner and Goldman Sachs executive Peter Sutherland, financier Dermot Desmond, and prominent businessmen Philip Lynch, Seán O’Driscoll of Glen Dimplex, and Cork-based developer Michael O’Flynn.
A Government source said yesterday that the report was likely to be considered by the new Coalition, given the pre-eminent nature of many of those involved. A spokesman for the Labour Party said that the report had not yet come to its attention and also pointed out that both Fine Gael and Labour had just agreed on their own document for recovery, the programme for government.
Elsewhere, there was mixed reaction to the report. Fianna Fáil spokesman on public and financial sector reform Michael McGrath said that many of the people involved in the report were proven and successful business people and there was a lack of business experience in the new Government and in the previous government.
“A group of people of this nature have gathered together and formulated proposals. They need to be considered very carefully.
“The responsibility for economic recovery just does not fall on Government but also falls on civic society and on the business community,” he said.
Fr Seán Healy of Social Justice Ireland said that while he welcomed some of the proposals, the approach adopted was unbalanced.
“I believe very strongly that economic policy and social policy must be dealt with simultaneously and in a complementary manner,” he said.
“They have omitted the social dimension completely.”
He also said that research published in recent weeks had shown that over 25 years the gap had widened between the 10 per cent of Irish people earning most and the least well off.
He said the welfare cuts envisaged in the report were draconian. “There is no way that this type of money can be saved by eliminating fraud. The level of fraud in the system is not as high as some people have suggested,” he said.
The United Left Alliance TD Joe Higgins described the report as “totally reactionary” and questioned the involvement of several of its participants.
He said Mr Sutherland was involved with the “vampire bank itself, Goldman Sachs” while Mr Spring was a member of the Labour Party which had just agreed a programme for government with Fine Gael.
“What is Dick Spring of the Labour Party doing getting involved in a report like this?”
Mr Higgins contended the effect of the report would be to make the crisis worse rather than better.
“It will have no credibility with ordinary working-class people. They want to make it worse with more taxes and more social welfare cuts. These people are light years removed from ordinary people,” said Mr Higgins.
