The document is carefully worded and leaves room for the Government to do a lot or a little, depending on its whim

Like the part dealing with fiscal policy, the section of the new Programme for Government relating to enterprise and employment issues is an exercise in ambiguity.

However, that is not to say that it does not give a lot of scope to any minister imbued with reforming zeal in this area.

If she is of a mind to do so, the Tánaiste has room over the next five years to tackle many issues confronting business. In particular, there is a commitment on page eight to "vigorously pursue a programme of regulatory reform with particular emphasis on removing unwarranted constraints on competition in all sectors of the economy and placing the consumer at the top of the policy agenda".

This is in essence a green light to take on vested interests and top of the pile must be the legal profession.

The Government has little or no hope of delivering on the goals it has set itself in the section of the programme dealing with insurance costs if it does not look at reform of the legal system. This is the clear conclusion of the report of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, the recommendations of which the Government has promised to implement.

In the longer term, the Government has set itself the goal of supporting the achievement of a single EU market for insurance. This would undoubtedly bring cheaper insurance but, as with most of the commitments in the document, words have been carefully chosen to give the Government room to do as little or as much as it likes on the issue.

There are a number of concrete commitments relating to insurance costs. They include legislating for the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (IFSRA) and establishing the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB). The former will see the transfer of the regulation of insurance companies to the IFSRA, which will have a clear pro-consumer mandate. The PIAB will reduce legal costs by setting compensation amounts, which means that only the issue of liability will have to be fought out in court.

These are both worthy goals but they are also both ideas that this Government promised during its last term in office but did not deliver. The reason presumably was that they were not priorities and consequently there was a lack of political will to push them through.

At the moment, motor insurance is a hot issue but, unless the reinstated Tánaiste moves quickly, momentum will be lost.

Tucked into the section on car insurance is a paragraph that will please business. It reads: "The high cost of business insurance is undermining enterprise and job creation. We will take action to limit the cost of public liability insurance on business. The civil law reform measures that we take will be central."

It goes on to list some specific actions that will be taken. They are the establishment of guidelines for damages for particular injuries, making public liability insurance compulsory and toughening up the laws on perjury. In addition "no-foal, no fee" advertising by solicitors will be banned.

Small and medium-sized business will also draw some comfort from the promise to "keep down taxes on work in order to ensure the competitiveness of the Irish economy and to maintain full employment".

But keeping down taxes is not quite the same thing as not putting up employers' PRSI contributions, which is the germane issue as far as IBEC and other representative bodies are concerned. The commitment to "examine" the tax treatment of share options - a key concern for multinational business - also incorporates some wriggle room.

The commitments given on improving the conditions of employment in the enterprise and employment section also contains plenty of get-out clauses.

Of the six "actions" listed in this section, one is an examination, two are reviews, another is a request, while a fifth is a promise to strengthen something.

It is hard to see the Government being held to ransom over any of these, most of which will push up costs for business. They include improvements istatutory redundancy payments, employment rights and parental leave. There is a commitment to "update" the Safety, Heath and Welfare at Work Act of 1989.

Euphemisms also regularly punctuate the rest of the section on employment and enterprise. The only really firm commitment is a €2,500 per person training fund "for those experiencing or likely to experience severe employability barriers".

There is also a commitment to extend the Employment Action Plan preventative strategy to all persons on the live register for longer than six months.

Entrenched in the carefully worded document is scope for the sort of horse trading that will be required to forge another national partnership agreement between workers and employers. But here again the language employed hints that the Government is not too bothered about a successor for the Partnership for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF).

If there is another agreement, the Government will have a few conditions of their own. It will "seek to negotiate a new partnership agreement to follow the PPF and ensure that it recognises that partnership must embrace organisation change, agree ways of improving the delivery of public service and provide for the modernisation of our workforce".

On balance the document gives the new administration scope to achieve much, but commits it to very little. The only guide as to what might be delivered for business and the consumer is the outgoing Government's record.