World needs to learn Ireland is 'open for business' - McAleese

THE WORLD needs to learn that Ireland is ready to “begin again” after its economic nightmare, President Mary McAleese has said.

Speaking to IDA Ireland staff yesterday, the President urged them to tell the world of an Ireland that was complex, exciting and resilient, rather than fatalistic or cliché-ridden.

Ireland was open for business and determined to put “this awful period” behind it as quickly as possible but was also determined to remember the lessons learned, she said.

The last couple of years have been tough for national morale, she said. “Today, people are more likely to talk of nightmare than dream, having come from so much, having seen so much growth, having been the beneficiaries of so much change in quality of life. This sudden braking has had a dreadfully depressing impact on people, has led to increased unemployment, renewed emigration and so many people feeling the strain of achieving public financial and banking stability.”

Mrs McAleese said growth had faltered under pressure from “a global recession, a financially vulnerable national building boom and the major problems we had in our own finances”. The job of IDA Ireland was to begin again to promote Ireland to an international audience, despite the current climate of disenchantment.

International investors would have to be brought beyond current negativity to the image of an industrious, resilient Ireland. “Your job is to introduce them to the Ireland that is not reducible to single headlines, or fatalistic opinion pieces, but rather the complex and exciting Ireland that is cosmopolitan, hard-working, competitively priced, imaginative, innovative, ready to do business, the only English-speaking member of the euro zone, already hugely successful in attracting premium foreign investment, [and] an Ireland whose exports remain incredibly strong despite global pressures and local economic vicissitudes.”

She paid tribute to the IDA’s “outstanding” record in recent decades. “Ireland’s strong economic performance over the last half century can in many ways be directly linked to the success of your work.” The future economic prospects of the country would equally be dictated by the extent to which it succeeded in its work.

Referring to the IDA’s plan to create 105,000 new jobs by 2014, she said a lot of households were depending on the organisation’s strong track record “coming through for them”.

Mrs McAleese said it was striking that amid the “preoccupation” with the IMF-EU deal, the four-year plan and the Budget, a succession of IDA job announcements got only modest media attention.