Better government
Irish companies should be able to go about their business, in fairness.
The challenge
Poorly designed policy, legislation, regulation and service delivery add to the cost of doing business and are an obstacle to growth and job creation. While Ireland scores well internationally for ease of doing business, we have a poor track record in how we legislate and develop policy. Our public administration does not apply a sufficiently systematic approach to assessing the impact of new regulations which leads to unintended consequences.
The State and its agencies also have a significant impact on business conditions in areas such as enterprise support structures, utilities, local government services and infrastructure delivery. Ireland ranks poorly in many of these areas and urgent reform is needed. Continuous reform is needed to deliver greater efficiency and cost competitiveness in government services. The number of state agencies and the overlap between them causes problems for business by generating additional costs, uncertainties and inconsistencies.
The solution
- Embed rigorous regulatory impact assessment into the policy making process
- Eliminate unnecessary regulatory and administrative costs
- Introduce a new low-cost, timely and non-judicial appeals model for regulated sectors
- Simplify and reform enterprise support structures, particularly innovation funding
- Reform the procurement process to reduce costs and encourage SME participation
- Reduce the cost of local government and introduce a fairer, more transparent system of local government charges for business
- Extend recent changes to public sector pensions for new entrants to all staff
- Protect Ireland’s successful, voluntarist approach to collective bargaining
Read about the other campaign priorities
: Extend Ireland's global reach - Promote enterprise and entrepreneurship - Invest in the future - Reduce the tax burdenJoin the conversation
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Related content links
- Public Sector Reform (Ibec policy position)
- Infrastructure 2020: Building beyond the bailout (Ibec policy position)
- Any move to introduce collective bargaining would cost jobs (Ibec press release - May 2013)
- Ibec rejects call for change to collective bargaining rights (Ibec press article - May 2012)