‘Incomprehensible to sit on cash pile as global economy undergoes rewiring,’ says new Ibec president
Support for Irish businesses to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and develop future-focused skills can make Ireland a net beneficiary of the new technology, according to Ibec’s newly elected president, Maureen Walsh. Walsh, who is managing director of DeCare Dental Insurance Ireland, also identifies infrastructure investment, including housing, energy, transport and digital connectivity as key to enabling continued growth in all parts of the country. Looking back to her early years in DeCare and the near panic surrounding the so-called Y2K bug, she says the current technological shift “makes Y2K look like an administrative glitch”. “Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept; it is here, and it is going to rewrite the rules of how we work, how we live and how we compete,” she continues. “Just as we prepared then, we must strategically, confidently and deliberately prepare now. The world is navigating a profound reordering of the global trading system. Public policy must once again actively pursue growth rather than passively expecting it.” Against this backdrop, Walsh says the focus of her presidency will be on three core policy themes: equipping the workforce for the AI era, creating a fairer ecosystem for entrepreneurs and delivering on balanced regional development. “We are entering a once-in-a-generation period of technological change and opportunity that has the potential to transform our labour market and make Ireland the home of the world’s most competitive AI native workforce,” she says. However, she points out that while Ireland consistently ranks as having one of the most highly educated workforces in the world, the country is not moving fast enough on structured lifelong learning. “We have a clear solution at our fingertips,” Walsh contends. “We must immediately release the €2 billion surplus currently sitting untouched in the National Training Fund. We must deploy this funding to rapidly expand programmes like Skillnet Enterprise-led networks and Springboard+. It is economically incomprehensible to sit on a cash pile while the global economy undergoes a fundamental rewiring. The best way to shape the future is to invest in the people who will build it.” Calling for greater backing for Irish entrepreneurs, Walsh says “we must support the risk-takers. Small indigenous businesses are the vital lifeblood of our local communities and a dynamic force within our broader economic ecosystem. They are even more than that. They are the creators, the innovators and the disrupters. They have proven themselves on an Irish and global scale.” Irish business owners are “currently facing a perfect storm of rising operational costs and dense regulatory administrative burdens. We must move beyond taxation alone and tackle the dense administrative burdens weighing down our founders.” And there are ways to do this, she says. “We must commit to radical regulatory simplification through an expanded ‘SME Test’ to protect scaling firms from disproportionate red tape. Our entrepreneurs must be able to secure the external investment necessary to turn vision into reality. We must simplify the access to, and take-up of, critical taxation support measures and grant schemes to support growth requirements. “By dismantling these financial and administrative barriers, we empower business owners to do what they do best: innovate, secure the investment they need to scale and create the high-quality jobs of the future right across the country and indeed globally.” Turning to infrastructure, Walsh says resolving regional deficits in transport, energy, water and housing is crucial if businesses across Ireland are to maintain productivity, compete for talent, and trade internationally. “Speaking as a business leader in the west, I see daily that the resourcefulness of our workforce remains our true competitive edge,” she says. “But to safeguard existing enterprise and convince the next generation of foreign direct investment to choose our regions over competing global markets, that human potential must be backed by high-capacity utility and connectivity networks – because ambition for our regions without world-class infrastructure is just noise.” She calls for capital spending to be prioritised above all other fiscal demands. “That means protecting budgets in real terms, rebalancing the planning system to put the common good first, and streamlining processes to accelerate project delivery on the ground.” Long-term thinking and commitment are required, she concludes, calling on the Government to “look past the immediate political cycle, to clear the regulatory quagmires holding back our entrepreneurs, and to bring an unapologetic focus to building an economy that can withstand whatever comes next to ensure continued growth and prosperity. “We want to look back 10 years from now and say that this was the moment Ireland chose to back its risk-takers, the family business that invested in the next generation, the start-up that created jobs we had not yet imagined, the multinational that chose to reinvest here as part of their growth strategy.”