OK, we know the economy is in serious trouble, but is there a plan? The answer is an emphatic yes. But like a lot of those kinds of plans it is not written with you, the punter, in mind.

So here’s the Ideas Campaign’s “cheat sheet” to the plan, which is called Building Ireland’s Smart Economy. In a nutshell, the government wants to:

• Put the public finances back on track. They’re now in a very serious state, because of company closures, job losses, the fall in retail sales and a host of other factors, many of which are outside our control and are affecting every economy worldwide.
• Put innovation at the heart of what we do. We have a solid base of technology companies, for instance, and we need to…
• Invest more in Research and Development. We need more bright sparks - people tinkering away in labs, in universities and software and technology. We need to be able to turn ideas into cash - that’s called commercialisation, a bit of a buzzword. And we need more multinationals who are prepared to put their R & D headquarters in Europe.
• Create green businesses. There are jobs and business opportunities that arise from global warming and we’re in a good place to exploit them.
• Continue to invest in our roads, housing, transport and so on. That’s about continuing to invest in infrastructure. You’ll probably see those NDP signs on the sides of the buses. Well, the government believes that that’s absolutely vital going forward.

Want to find out more? Then we’ve included the government’s full document for download [PDF, 707 KB]