Summary of ideas submitted in the All island economy category…

• Establish an independent body to investigate political and other forms of corruption.
• Establish an Investment Bond or reverse SSIA that sees the citizens pay money now to the Government to provide liquidity. The money is to be repaid within five years and investors don’t receive interest, but instead receive tax credits in return.
• Establish ‘one-stop-shops’ nationwide to advise social/community enterprises. These would provide access to experts in funding, business planning, coaching, mentoring and legal issues.
• Every employee in work should give up one week’s holiday pay to the state
• Every Government department must ‘rightsize’ themselves to meet the specific demands of the department. This means identifying just the right number of people needed to do the job for the local citizens and businesses. The others go into a special “available pool” for utilisation elsewhere to generate revenue.
• Every working person contributes a day’s work to the Government
• Everybody in the economy, public and private, should donate a month’s wages to the exchequer every year for three years.
• Examine the potential for establishing co-operative ventures in various economic sectors.
• Exempt all new firms establishing in Ireland from corporation tax for five years if they are employing over 100 workers.
• Exempt new graduates from employers PRSI for five years.
• Expand links to mainland Europe and reintroduce the Cork-Swansea ferry
• Fit thermostats to all radiators in public buildings
• Force the banks to write down the value of all mortgages by at least 30%
• Foreign multinationals should be forced to retain more of their profits in Ireland
• Freeze wages across the board and maximise economies on public infrastructure spending. This will be possible because the state will be able to build same thing next year at half the price it would have cost two years ago - be that a railway, bus corridor or motorway.
• Generate more international exposure for our politicians to reassure international investors of the merits of investing in Ireland
• Get a round table panel (public and private) together of people who guided Ireland through the last recession.
• Get all senior staff who have been made redundant to make contributions to an economic growth think-tank.
• Get highly paid civil servants to give up a percentage of their income
• Get money into the banks by clearing all short term loans asap
• Get the country’s leading economists to pool their best ideas for rescuing the Irish economy.
• Get the unemployed to carry out community service in exchange for social welfare payment while trying to regain professional employment. They suggest a 20 hour week at €10 per hour.
• Give companies a member of the live register’s dole allowance for the first three months of them coming off the live register with clawbacks if the individual is let go within 6 months of being hired.
• Give taxpayers a ‘tax holiday’ which would give them more disposable income and encourage them to get saving or spending again
• Government agencies north and south should combine to market and develop the whole island as one
• Government should take money from people in employment in the form of a levy which is then treated as a loan and repaid at a future date
• Government to subsidise struggling companies instead of allowing lay offs and paying welfare etc then
• Government to take lotto monies when required by the state.
• Grant Oireachtas committees the full powers of compelling witnesses and evidence.
• Harmonise VAT and Excise duties with the UK to remove incentives for cross-border shopping
• Harness the full potential of the oceans that surround us for food, energy, tourism. Create biomass, intensively farm it, and develop it for health and wellbeing, and for human and animal food.
• Hire successful heads of private companies to review how the public service is run.
• Identify companies close to layoffs or shutting down and give incentives for them to stay in operation
• If a person is unable to meet their mortgage obligations, the Government should redeem half the mortgage in return for a two-year payment holiday. Thereafter the mortgage holder pays 3% interest on the loan which is now attached to the property rather than the individual. If the house is sold, the purchaser takes on the amounting value of the loan.
• Implement a shorter working week. Reduced income would be outweighed by enhanced quality of life.