THE Progressive Democrats have outlined an "action plan" on unemployment, including tax cuts, streamlining of the bureaucracy and a drastic reduction in the number of job creation agencies.
A 29 page document entitled "Ireland Can Work" was launched by the PD leader, Ms Mary Harney, the party's finance spokesman, Mr Michael McDowell, and its education and equality spokeswoman, Ms Helen Keogh TD.
The plan involves reducing the basic income tax rate from 27 per cent to 20 per cent and the higher rate from 48 per cent to 40 per cent. Pay Related Social Insurance for workers would be abolished, and employers' PRSI reduced to seven per cent.
The standard rate of corporation tax would go down from 38 per cent to 25 per cent, and capital gains tax on "risk investments" from 40 per cent to 25 per cent "in order to stimulate investment and reward risk taking".
The party seeks to reduce the level of State bureaucracy involved in job creation "so that the available grant assistance can be distributed speedily and easily to qualifying applicants".
Ms Harney said there were currently 120 different job creation agencies, employing 4,000 people. The PDs would reduce the number of agencies to two one each for indigenous and foreign industry.
The PDs favour setting up "one stop shops" in each county to assist development and encourage local enterprise. The party would encourage, through tax breaks, the creation of "Venture Capital Trusts" as a means of channelling Stock Exchange funding into developing companies.
The party also favours increasing the availability of subsidised loans from the main financial institutions to small and medium enterprises.
The document says competition must be fostered in the provision of essential services such as energy and telecommunications, where "the State should act as regulator, not owner."
The PDs say their jobs programme can be implemented without increasing public spending. "It is based on tax reductions which can be comfortably accommodated within the budgetary arithmetic of an expanding economy."
Asked if she was setting an agenda for the general election Ms Harney said. "No party in my view has a monopoly of care or concern for any particular section of the population. All the parties in the Dail care about the poor, the unemployed and the unprivileged where we differ is in how we believe those problems can be tackled.
"The Progressive Democrats believe giving more incentive to people, making it easier to work giving people a reward for working harder is the way to deal with many of these problems in our society," she said.
The government that came in after the next election would be led by Fianna Fail or Fine Gael, but the real choice for the voters was between the Labour Party and the PDs as junior coalition partner. "It's not just a choice of party, it's a choice of direction. It's a choice between more quangos, more task forces, more consultants and programme managers, more tax, more spending or less quangos, less consultants, less task forces, lower tax and more people at work."
Ms Harney had a collection of official reports on job creation piled in front of her as she spoke. "If reports, task forces, quangos, committees, consultants, could solve the job crisis then Ireland certainly would have a surplus of people in employment," she said.
There must be a move away from creating grantrepreneurs to creating entrepreneurs, because Irish industry was over dependent on grant aid.
The tax policies of the PDs "would result, for example, in a worker on £200 a week being £23 a week better off," Ms Harney said.