Slightly bumpier version of my piece in today’s Irish Daily Mail:

Richard Delevan

Exporting, instead of selling houses to each other, is the only real way to grow our way out of the hole we’re sinking into. Selling software, green innovations and services to the world is the way we get back to a position of strength.

Our tax and economic policies have to ignore the powerful construction lobby and vested property interests screaming for life support, and offer smarter export tax credits to indigenous exporting companies that create jobs here.

Innovation is the second ingredient. The good news is that it can be easier in some ways to try new things during hard times. Government can do its part. It must cut layers of administrative fat from behemoths like the HSE. It can and must change its procurement policies, leaning on suppliers to get a better deal by using online reverse auctions. Savings to the Exchequer could run to the hundreds of millions.

We must do more to encourage research and development, both in indigenous firms and foreign multinationals. The R&D tax credit we introduced in 2004 has done some good, and the extension of favourable treatment on credits, currently extended to 2009, should be extended for another three years at least.

An additional R&D tax credit on steroids needs to be introduced, along with a renewed seed capital programme. Promising companies in green energy, biotechnology, nanotechnology and life sciences should be given special attention and fast-tracked for incentives.

Consolidation and further competition needs to be permitted in dozens of sectors, to reduce inefficiencies and allow an Irish version to emerge of what the Germans call the “Mittelstand” – a group of highly efficient, dynamic, profitable and sustainable largish mid-sized businesses to develop.

Leadership is the linchpin, however. None of the ideas to jump-start the Irish economy will matter a damn with the current crop of leadership. Business doesn’t feel anyone’s in charge. And that was before Brian Lenihan decided to tell the building industry that it was his “misfortune” to be in charge when the soft landing became a “shuddering halt”. We need people who won’t shrink from the challenge. Bringing back Charlie McCreevey mightn’t be a bad start.

Or alternatively, we may have to wait for Fine Gael to dump Enda and put forward a credible alternative Taoiseach. A David Cameron to Brian Cowen’s Gordon Brown. (Anybody seen Simon Coveney lately?) Otherwise, not just business will lose confidence. If the Pope’s Children stop voting against stupidities like Lisbon and start voting with their feet, we’ll forget there were ever good times to begin with.

ENDS