Summary of ideas submitted in the Policy category…

• Cut top salaries within the public service and introduce accountability for the mismanagement of public funds.
• Decrease overseas development aid funding and instead use a proportion of it to double troop allocation for overseas peace support operations. This money could also be used to purchase strategic transport aircrafts which, apart from being used in support of peace support operations, could be offered to NGOs for the transport of foreign aid.
• Departmental forms should be analysed and combined to save on time filing them out.
• Deregulate the entire market to help competition and end the practice of cartels.
• Develop a positive national vision to increase confidence.
• Develop a scheme that allows small and start-up businesses to hire unemployed people on short term contracts. The government would continue to pay social welfare entitlements and the company would supplement the individual’s income.
• Develop student contracts for third level courses that are in demand. These contracts would tie students into working for a specified number of years, at a pre determined maximum rate, in order to minimise the possibility of a brain drain.
• Develop uranium mining facilities.
• Devolution: leach city/county run itself.
• Divide savings from ESB bills evenly between all accounts rather than a 10% price reduction.
• Do away with traffic signs to reduce costs.
• Do not tie the Irish economy into European Central Bank (ECB) interest rates.
• Don’t publish Government reports in Irish and do not invest in Irish language campaigns.
• Don’t tax very low income families and to take into account the number of children a family has when calculating their tax payments.
• Draft Peter Sutherland into cabinet.
• Drop Irish wage levels to match those of workers in countries like Poland and make up the difference with employment grants. Money for the employment grants could come from cutting unemployment assistance
• Drop the requirement for those on the register to prove they are looking for work and replace it a requirement to prove they are up-skilling (via FAS, Plc courses,etc) or engaged in volunteer work.
• Each citizen should look after their health etc so as not to cost the state money in paying for their treatment.
• Each Government minister should be given an eFlow tag for their car rather than creating car spaces for them for a full year as they are not in use all year round.
• Eliminate corporation tax.
• Eliminate fraud and abuse of state benefits.
• Eliminate overtime and hire more workers where needed.
• Eliminate Stamp Duty on property transactions. Instead, introduce multi-property income taxes to deter future speculation and provide rebates on a sliding scale to those who have paid Stamp Duty in the last five years. Use our influence in Europe to get house/property prices included in CPI/inflation indices.
• Eliminate VAT on drink served with food.
• Eliminate wasteful spending in the public sector. Those involved in making and delivering this saving should be rewarded with a tax free payment equivalent to half the first years saving.
• Employ scientists to develop way of personalising drugs and their doses to aid recovery and eliminate side effects.
• Employers should register with the state to take on a recently unemployed person for a limited amount of hours a week. They should state what they require and what they will offer in terms of training in return.
• Enact and enforce rigid anti-corruption legislation.
• Enact flat rate tax regime, and replace VAT with a simple sales tax regime at lower rates.
• Encourage banks to convert 20-25% of their loans to interest free status for three-five years to cut costs for industry.
• Encourage immigrants to invest the money earned here back into the Irish economy instead of their own home country.
• Encourage job sharing and part time work.
• Encourage job sharing within the civil service to lower costs.
• Encourage large firms to change to 20 days credit instead of 30; this would help improve cash flow forsmaller businesses.
• Encourage older people with money hidden at home to deposit it in the banks and other financial institutions.