Summary of ideas submitted in the Other category…

• Currently there is no VAT on insurance. It’s a huge market and one in which currently no VAT is applicable. How much would be generated by introducing even the lower VAT rate in insurance? Medical insurance could be excluded.
• Currently, Ireland has among the highest rates in the world of many chronic diseases. The treatment of all of these disorders together accounts for the majority of the €15-16 billion health budget each year. The funding provided to preventative healthcare research and intervention needs to be enhanced, with innovative measures in the field of diet, nutrition and lifestyle particularly useful.
• Curtail payments made by the state.
• Cut all TD salaries and expenses by 50%.
• Cut costs from senior public servants. The country would benefit hugely from the reduced waste in this sector and the huge savings that would result.
• Cut down on rental spend of government departments and the HSE.
• Cut hair from hairdressers could be recycled.
• Cut public sector jobs.
• Cut TD expenses.
• Declare a National Irish Week for the diaspora. During this week, Irish people from all over the world will be invited back to Ireland, to hold workshops and conferences, to brainstorm, and to donate their valuable expertise to solving problems here. This would take considerable organisation, but in the right hands, during this week projects could be initiated or completed. Ideas could be exchanged.
• Defer state pension for say two to three years in return for repayment of the amounts so deferred spread over say five years starting at the end of the deferral period.
• Designate places where people can trade by selling Irish goods, homemade goods, home crafts, etc.
• Despite all the doom and gloom, wonderful things continue to happen in Ireland, and good news business stories should become a feature of TV, radio, print and on your site. They could be regionalised and each medium could have weekly winners, culminating in monthly winners and so on.
• Destroy the electronic voting machines as they cost millions to store and use the money to introduce the cervical cancer vaccine.
• Develop a local forum for exchange of enterprise ideas and skills that will support local people in developing new enterprises. It would function as a local mentoring and support service operated by local people in using and selling and/or exchanging their skills/services/products.
• Develop a systematic approach to innovation by giving people problems to solve rather than providing them with a blank canvas to put forward their ideas. Suppose a site is created with the top-level categories like ‘home’, ‘office’, ‘transport’, ‘factory’, etc.
• Develop an ‘Employment Agency for the Unemployed’ based on the German model post-reunification. The ‘participants’ were usually recently unemployed or had lost much of their income source; after screening and interviews those selected were awarded employment contracts by the ‘agency’ (usually for 12 months).
• Develop the battle site of the Battle of Glenmama.
• Devise a site where people could log their specific problems to afford someone else the chance of a) devising a solution or b) advising as to how the problem might be solved. The consequence might be an increase in the availability of “new inventions”.
• Disband Dell taskforce.
• Disband the Senate.
• Discontinue payment of pension to serving Ministers/TDs.
• Discourage saving and encourage spending. Raise the DIRT rate to at least 50% for all deposits. This would also apply to deposit based unit fund investments. If we make saving unattractive we persuade people to start spending rather than “over” saving.
• Discourage the fitting of tank-fed power showers in grant-aided installations for the vulnerable and elderly.
• Disincentivise large salaries for executives. To calculate income tax rate, divide salary by 1,000 and square the figure you get.
• Dissolve the Dáil. Call a general election - every candidate enters as an independent, every elected representative then elects a Cabinet of seven ministers.
• Disused corporate boxes in Croke Park (e.g. Anglo): open these boxes to charities and disadvantaged children’s causes such as Barretstown and treat our young and disadvantaged kids to a great day out courtesy of the people of Ireland.
• Donate old schoolbooks no longer used.
• Donating proceeds from the sale of CD’s to a hospice.
• Double 1/2/3% levy.
• Drastically cut the cost to employers of employing people. More jobs = more spending = more jobs. Simple!
• Drive down costs to make our exports and tourism industry more competitive and to mitigate the impact on people who have lost jobs or suffered salary cuts. Cut prices in shops. Reduce telephone costs. Reduce professional fees.
• Drop stamp duty by 50% for a six-month period only.
• Drop the minimum wage to make employment more affordable and to bring rates in line with minimum wage across the Border, and cut out penalty rates for restaurants and entertainment industry at weekends and evenings.
• Dundalk Bay is the most cost-effective ‘platform’ for development of marine emplacements (turbine towers), to generate wave energy and has a proven environment for aquaculture.