Summary of ideas submitted in the Other category…

• Firstly as a nation we need to gain respect and confidence from the rest of the world.
• Florists import a huge percentage of their flowers and greenery: I wonder if polytunnels could not produce a great deal of this instead in Ireland.
• Focus not on economic growth but well-being.
• Focus on countries that aren’t currently in recession, to see what they are doing right, such as Canada, or look back in time to see how countries that were in recession in the past overcame their difficulties.
• Focus on high-energy hobbies: water rafting, boating, wild sports - look to what they are doing in New Zealand. Killarney could be just like Queenstown.
• Follow USA example with tax rebates: 18-25 €300; 26-40 €500; 41-64 €600; and €300 for over 65 years of age.
• Follow words of Karl Marx in 1867 when he said owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credit, until their debt becomes unbearable.
• For companies that provide services to semi-state companies or government departments and provide a current tax clearance certificate from Revenue, they should not have Professional Services Withholding Tax applied to their invoices. This would simplify their company accounts.
• For new businesses there should be a moratorium on tax for two years, assistance for part-time employees and a subsidy from the Government to help break even for the first two years.
• For small-scale use of wind energy, using as an alternative to the conventional wind turbines driven by rotating blades, it might be possible to develop another method of capturing the wind energy. I suggest that use might be made of the Archimedean Spiral or Screw.
• Forestry all along the west coast would absorb rain coming from the Atlantic. I am suggesting transferring young native trees to replant and make up new woods and forests from existing woods.
• Form a club comprising individuals and corporations that earned serious wealth over the Celtic Tiger years. The idea then is for small and medium sized companies that are facing difficulties getting the necessary funding from banks to stay afloat to approach this club and present their case supported by the relevant paperwork to obtain the finance they require. They would repay the funds along the same lines as they would if it were a bank.
• Form a panel of experts to make plans to bring the country forward.
• Form a team of people from industry along with Enterprise Ireland and IDA to examine all companies employing over 500 people (approx 300) and create a “risk register”, examining their risk to job loss over the next 24 months and identify what it would take to eliminate the risks.
• Foster better ties with Irish descendants worldwide through a website.
• Free legal aid should not be a given.
• Free up Garda staff time by removing the passport/licence application approval work from station front-desks - this could be re-allocated to post offices.
• Freehold property owner could borrow say 20% of the current value of his/her property at normal interbank rates and buy a tax free interest paying bond from the sate and collect the premium the state is paying. The idea is a scheme to literally borrow a large potion of our debt at home using the now large spare working capacity of the state bank or banks.
• Freeze all public sector pensions and expand the remit of the NTMA to allow it to take in and manage private pension contributions and total private pension funds.
• Freeze mortgages for a period so there would be no need for an expensive rehousing scheme.
• Fully nationalise the entire Irish banking system first, secondly re-assess the financial situation of the Irish economy (privately owned banks will never disclose the real size of their debts, so we do not have the full picture yet), and design long-term, sustainable strategies afterwards.
• Further capital investment in Northern Ireland should be scaled back and the savings redirected to carers.
• General practitioners need to move into modern shared facilities, with X-ray, ultrasound, and other now basic medical, pharmacy, secretarial, and bookkeeping facilities centrally available. Helped by the introduction of a Health BES.
• Get all employees of the public service to think about ways that they can develop process improvements and innovate in the public service. An employee comes up with an idea, gets it implemented through their manager (after it’s assessed as a good idea), it gets recorded and analysed by a process improvement forum (group) to calculate the savings this improvement makes, and the employee gets a percentage of this saving as a once-off bonus.
• Get everybody who is receiving social welfare along with volunteers to labour on road and rail projects postponed due to lack of funding, as these will be the lifeblood of communication and economic growth.
• Get people working by reintroducing the “work experience” schemes of the 1980s.
• Get rid of income tax completely and tax products. This reduces the cost of collecting the tax for the state and the stress involved for tax payers.
• Get rid of the reserve defence forces.
• Get rid of VRT altogether in order to boost the national and European market, and replace VRT with a fuel tax as this is fairer. Offer VRT refunds on all existing registered cars which are exported, so as we can compete with the UK in the second-hand market.
• Get state agencies and private enterprise working together to realise the value that is available in lazy or under-utilised state assets (example given of project in Naas in building schools).
• Get the best brains in business to brainstorm.
• Get the Corrib pipeline on stream.
• Get the Government to buy the banks’ toxic assets with special government bonds, not money. This allows the banks to swap toxic assets for gilts.
• Get the whole country involved in a rolling tidy towns campaign. Make it a year-round focus to improve all aspects of life in the country.
• Give a tax credit to every employer for every employee he or she employs for each full tax year.