The Enterprise Strategy Group's report has helped the Government focus on how to make the changeover to a knowledge-based economy, writes John McManus

It is tempting to dismiss the action plan to implement the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) report as a careful construction of fudge and spin. Certainly, if the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment's body language at yesterday's press conference is anything to go by, he has little enthusiasm for the project, which he inherited from his predecessor, Tánaiste Mary Harney.

The Government may, as Mr Martin was keen to point out, have accepted 70 per cent of the recommendations made by the ESG, but the reality is that it has kicked to touch on practically every controversial proposal.

The bulk of the recommendations that have been accepted are ideas that are already common case with existing policy or represent fine tuning rather than a major overhaul.

The more radical recommendations have been long fingered. No special structures called Export Ireland and Technology Ireland are being created within Enterprise Ireland to focus on export marketing and R&D. A thousand State-funded marketing executives are not being unleased on small business and the concept of an enterprise czar to preside over Forfás, IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland has been expressly ruled out.

What we are getting in the critical area of enterprise policy development and implementation is a lot of consultations, discussions and some in-depth strategic reviews.

All in all, the action plan is a pretty anaemic affair. But perhaps that is the preferable outcome. Any analysis of the action plan really has to start with the Enterprise Strategy Group report itself, which was a somewhat overblown document containing a number of well-meaning, but fundamentally unworkable initiatives (1,000 Government funded marketers being a case in point).

It also overlapped with the work of other bodies including the National Competitiveness Council (NCC), which feeds into policy making every year. This in turn goes some way to explaining why so many of the ESG's recommendations - such as increasing the number of people completing the Leaving Certificate - are already Government policy and thus could be easily adopted by the Government.

The problem seems to have arisen with the more radical proposals, such as the shake-up of the enterprise agencies. While these proposals may have had some merits, it's pretty clear that nobody at a political level was able to - or perhaps wanted to - push them through in the face of opposition from the agencies themselves.

This is easily understandable. Unlike the Culliton Report - with which it has been compared - the Enterprise Strategy Group report was not drawn up against a background of a national economic crisis. In fact, the opposite was true. With the economy enjoying its most sustained period of prosperity since the foundation of the State it is hard to argue that there is a problem to be fixed, and thus justify root and branch reform of the State bodies that played a part in delivering this success.

With hindsight its clear that the approach adopted by the ESG (numerous detailed recommendations, action plans etc) was the wrong way to go. It may have worked well in tackling the clearly defined and very real problems of motor insurance costs, but its value in something as nebulous as formulating medium-term economic policy during a time of sustained growth is much harder to quantify.

But the work of the group has clearly had some input into the debate. It has helped the Government focus on a number of key policy areas that will contribute to the attainment of the Holy Grail of changing from an inward investment-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. Central to this is a clear focus on indigenous industry.

It is clear that Mr Martin sees the report as an opportunity to do just this. He dwelt at length yesterday on the restructuring of the Enterprise Ireland to provide companies with support in the areas of export sales and marketing.

The other issue which Mr Martin used the report to highlight was the ongoing revamp of Government support for research and development. Mr Martin made it clear that for him this is the key tool at the Government's disposal for weaning the economy away from its dependence on foreign investment. Mr Martin also chose to highlight workplace training and the development of enterprise networks and important policy objectives.

All of these ideas have been knocking around for a decade if not more. If the ESG has achieved anything it has been to cement them in the current policy framework. As for its other ideas, sometimes fudge is the only solution.