The infrastructure for industry is continuously lacking in Ireland. We are currently ranked second from last in Europe for Broadband connectivity. 50% of our domestic water is wasted through leaking pipes and we are wasting billions on our energy needs. Fine Gael would introduce NewERA an €18 billion stimulus package to invest in our industry infrastructure. This plan would last 4 years and help get up to 100’000 people back to work by retooling our economy.
NewERA has 3 key areas, Water distribution, Energy Usage and Broadband. We envisage that by 2020 50% of our energy needs should be produced by Renewables, this would help insulate us from rising oil prices in which we extremely vulnerable to at present due to 90% of our current energy requirements coming from oil. By 2025 50% of all cars in will run on electricity which would in turn continue to reduce or carbon footprint. A new company, Irish Water will be established to manage our water needs, currently 34 local authorities share that responsibility which doesn’t return value for the €700 million a year spent on water purification.
Fine Gael would initiate Broadband 21 to develop a network of high speed fibre optic cables throughout the country. Even though some areas in the country are covered by Broadband the bandwidth is so low it’s not going to be able to support the new Next Generation technologies. Ireland has the potential to be at the forefront of the ever growing IT sector. The country is already demonstrated as a successful central European Business hub with the example of Google setting up their European headquarters in Dublin.
Ireland has to capacity to lead the way in the IT sector and thus ensure more university graduates follow on into high skilled positions within the country. All of what’s in the NewERA plan are necessities for industry to grow in modern Ireland. Even though a significant undertaking it is essential to overcome the years of neglect under the present government.
No comments:
Post a Comment