TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton will participate in an “Invest in Ireland” conference hosted by former US president Bill Clinton in New York today.
The purpose of the meeting, and of the speech delivered by Mr Gilmore at the influential Brookings Institution in Washington yesterday, is to foster a cycle whereby investment, jobs and international confidence in Ireland feed each other, Mr Gilmore said.
“It’s a slow process. It’s inch by inch. It’s company by company that we can persuade to invest in Ireland. Day by day, we rebuild our reputation.” Standing outside the US Capitol, the Tánaiste seemed to survey the distance crossed in the past year. “When I was here at the very beginning of the Government, we were on the edge of the cliff”, he recalled.
Mr Gilmore said a report in the New York Times that Franklin Templeton Investments in California has bought as much as $2.5 billion in Irish Government bonds was “a positive sign”.
Earlier, he told the audience at Brookings, drawn from think tanks, embassies, banks, law firms and the US government, that “For the Irish people, being forced to seek assistance from the EU and IMF was a profoundly traumatic event.”
Mr Gilmore recounted the reforms enacted by the Government, its “dialogue based on trust and confidence” with the EU/IMF troika, and the negotiated improvements to the programme, which “reduced our debt burden by €10 billion”.
The Government cut a further €3.8 billion from its first budget in December, following €20 billion in cuts since 2008. “This brings me to one of the key questions . . . How can we reconcile necessary austerity with a growth agenda?” Mr Gilmore asked. “Given that unemployment has reached 14 per cent in Ireland, this issue is at the top of the Government’s agenda.”
In response to a question about Keynesian economics, Mr Gilmore said, “We’re in a new place. You can’t reach back into the past for some kind of template and expect it to work . . . We are pioneering.” The Tánaiste did not attempt to hide the severity of the crisis in Ireland. GDP had declined 12 per cent, he said. But the Irish economy had at last returned to growth – 1 per cent in 2011. “We are now recording a balance of payments surplus after several years of deficits,” he added.
The government’s priorities were to create jobs and to improve confidence among domestic consumers, in particular by helping families with distressed mortgages.
Turning to the wider euro zone crisis, Mr Gilmore admitted that the EU decision-making process was often difficult for Americans to understand. But things were improving. “It took seven years to negotiate the Lisbon Treaty; the January 31st fiscal compact took only seven weeks.”
Describing the awkward conjunction of the EU with international financial markets, Mr Gilmore said, “This [EU] ethos is, to all intents and purposes, perpendicular to the mindset of financial markets, which have a built-in distaste for uncertainty, and for decision-making processes that do not proceed in straight lines . . . This was never going to be a marriage made in heaven.” Paraphrasing Mark Twain, the Tánaiste said “reports of the demise of the euro have been greatly exaggerated.”
He discussed the Middle East and Ireland’s stewardship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe with deputy secretary of state, William Burns. He briefed the US Congress’s Helsinki commission on OSCE activities, met congressmen regarding efforts to ease visa requirements for Irish citizens, and attended a reception given by Ambassador Michael Collins.
