Ireland is facing “three immense and immediate challenges”, the Taoiseach Brian Cowen has told participants in the Global Economic Forum at Farmleigh, in Dublin, today.
Mr Cowen said “defining choices” would soon be made on the Lisbon Treaty referendum, the National Asset Management Agency and the Budget.
“The referendum on the Lisbon treaty, the establishment of a National Asset Management Agency (Nama) and the framing of the next Budget are three immense and immediate challenges that we must positively resolve,” he said.
“We must ratify this referendum for jobs, for exports, for foreign direct investment and to help underpin our economic recovery.”
Mr Cowen said decisions made by leading multi-nationals to invest in Ireland were made on the basis of a thorough business case analysis.
“Ireland has long been and remains an attractive place to do business and we intend to keep it that way," he said.
“That's why Government, the main Opposition parties, the main business groupings, the heads of lots of individual multi-national companies have made it clear our job of attracting and securing inward investment and the employment that it supports will be made much more difficult were we to fail to endorse the Lisbon Treaty.”
He said Ireland had been profoundly affected by the global financial crisis.
“Some of our problems are also domestic in origin, such as an overheated property market and banking crisis and serious deterioration in public finances,” he said.
He said the 2010 Budget would contain “further difficult decisions”, on top of the decisions that will be taken this December.
Mr Cowen said that while action was important, so was attitude. “We must act with hope rather than despair, courage rather than fear, and we must look ahead rather than behind.”
Mr Cowen said the “Irish brand” had distinct and intrinsic value. “We must connect with that brand now, renovate it, use it, in order to give us a competitive advantage in a globalised world.”
It would not be good enough just to survive the economic crisis; the Irish economy had to be repositioned for the upturn.
The Taoiseach said the future of the economy would depend on exports. “The Ireland we envisage for the future is a smart, high-value, export-led economy. It will have some of the world's leading research-intensive multinationals, a number of which will be Irish-owned,” he said.
He said Ireland should in future have thousands of innovative small and medium enterprises smart, efficient and citizen-oriented public services.
Mr Cowen also said an enterprise culture needed to be developed. “It should be a reasonable aspiration of all children born in this country that they might, one day, have the opportunity to start their own business. That is what I am trying to achieve.”
Mr Cowen was addressing a conference of over 200 influential business figures from around the world with Irish links.
Participants in the three-day event include billionaire financier and Celtic FC backer Dermot Desmond, management guru Gerry Robinson, former Intel chief Craig Barrett and Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce.
The Taoiseach also said Ireland's relationship with its diaspora will be developed on an ongoing basis.
“These people have come, they've a great sense of loyalty to their country, a great pride in their heritage and in the contemporary world they are very successful people at what they do,” Mr Cowen said. “This is not just a weekend. This is about the structured dialogue with our diaspora on an ongoing basis.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said this afternoon the Government was trying to reach out to the Irish diaspora to develop global networks, emulating countries like Israel, Chile, Scotland and Australia.
"This is the first time we've ever brought the global diaspora together under the one roof," he told RTÉ's News At One.
Mr Martin said the conference is designed to generate ideas to help Ireland’s economic recovery and how Ireland can better present itself globally in years to come.
“Above all, we want ideas to come out of this weekend that can add value to what our companies are doing here and how we can attract investment into the country and develop other sectors of our economy.”