Enterprise group calls for urgent action

As he prepares to depart on a sailing holiday to Co Cork, Mr Eoin O'Driscoll is hoping other people will be working very hard over the next few weeks and months.

He sees it as imperative that the job he and his 15 fellow members of the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) have just completed is carried forward immediately rather than being left to slip off the political agenda over the summer.

Progress should be made by September, he believes, pointing specifically to the establishment of an inter-departmental group to consider how the Government should react to the report's recommendations.

"What's important is that it creates a sense of urgency," he says, half-acknowledging that the very words "inter-departmental group" can be enough to banish some projects to the holding pattern forever.

It is for this reason that the ESG has insisted that this inter-departmental group should be augmented by representatives from the private sector. These people, who have yet to be selected, should be of the type that prefers action to words, according to Mr O'Driscoll.

"We feel we've done what we could do," he says of the ESG, which published its report on industrial strategy, "Ahead of the Curve", on Wednesday.

"It probably should be carried forward by other people."

Mr O'Driscoll is also emphatic in his belief that the Government, which has already pointed out that the ESG's recommendations are merely that, should not cherry pick the report.

"If people have better recommendations, then we'd be happy to see that," he says, indicating that the report must be taken as a whole if it is to be effective.

The report uses a practical approach, drawing together strands of enterprise policy that were already floating about the Government stage in one form or another. Getting it all into one report to act as a roadmap for the future of business in the State was, however, no mean feat as a tired Mr O'Driscoll will readily admit.

The ESG was formed last July by the Tánaiste to undertake a sweeping review of the Republic's enterprise and employment policy. At its launch, Ms Harney told the group she wanted a "radical" approach.

In the event, "radical" may be too strong a word to describe the result. However, the ESG appears to have been motivated not by the interests of particular sections of society, but rather by a conviction that business should be at the centre of how the State ticks.

"Our belief is that by putting wealth creation on the agenda, we can have the society we want in terms of hospitals and schools," says Mr O'Driscoll.

"We should only be investing in enterprise if we're going to get a return for society."

Mr O'Driscoll and his colleagues - who were drawn from business, academia, economics and trade unions - had decided at the start of the ESG's deliberations that they were not a group of professional policymakers.

Rather than looking in their "rearview mirror at a mountain of data", the objective was to create a vision for the future based on practicalities.

This approach has attracted some criticism, however. Writing in this newspaper yesterday, eminent economist, Mr Colm McCarthy, accused the group of "policy-based evidence making", or recommending policies without a good basis for the advice.

Mr O'Driscoll rejects this: "Analysis in itself does not give a strategy, it gives you a history."

"We have not managed to grow indigenous industry. We need specific intervention in selling," he says.

This is not any old selling, however. Rather, it is selling after taking account of what the customer needs, or creating a market rather than simply occupying one. And this market should be an international one.

Working out how to internationalise, the ESG visited firms in Sweden, Finland and the UK. The Nordic countries were particularly interesting, Mr O'Driscoll says, because industrial success was being generated by indigenous rather than foreign firms. He believes the Finns were successful because they backed the "innovation ticket". In the UK, meanwhile, supports for small businesses had helped foster an imaginative domestic sub-sector.

Mr O'Driscoll acknowledges that if the vision outlined in the ESG's report comes to fruition, it will be accompanied by the failure of Irish firms that cease innovating.

He points out, however, that it could also create booms in areas that have thus far been overshadowed by large foreign direct-investment projects.

He points to Carlow-based Keenans as the perfect example of how this can be done from a low base. The company, which began as a small steel maker that happened to make machines for mixing animal meal, has now become a provider of sophisticated nutritional solutions that sells to the top 10,000 farmers around the world.

The ESG sees all strands of industry being developed under its plan but it urges greater concentration on niches within this.

The ideal would be to get domestic and multinational businesses to develop a "business network" that would allow them to create a market collectively rather than individually. Collaboration could be on areas such as legal matters or public procurement systems, with the ESG recommending that €20 million be made available each year to help support such efforts.

"Because global competition is so fierce you can't be average any more," says Mr O'Driscoll, outlining his vision of "clusters" of investment in sophisticated areas such as medical devices. These are areas where the global economic giants of China and India are still some years off having expertise.

Despite Mr O'Driscoll's belief that the baton on the strategy should now be passed on to new bodies, he admits that he will not be stepping off the stage entirely.

As the new chairman of Forfás, he will be closely involved with industrial policy for some time to come.

He dismisses the presumption, however, that he could now fill the position of over-arching chairman of Forfás, Enterprise Ireland and the IDA that the ESG recommends creating.