Rebuilding Ireland Inc

As country we have grown up dramatically in the last 30 years but our political, legal & civil services have failed to keep pace. As a nation that aspires to “moving up the value chain” we need to find leaders who actually know what this means and who can make this happen. No longer are we prepared to accept “intellectually blank assertions” (no presentation of the analysis, evidence, data, or plan for consideration) from patronising politicians or clergy who seem to think that we are incapable of understanding what’s going on and what it takes to actually deliver for the country.

The days when the bank manager, the politician, the parish priest, the solicitor or the doctor are the only educated people in town are long since over and that smoozing and pulling strokes was how we measured political success. Politicians in general and Fianna Fail in particular however have failed to recognise this passing. In the same way that Lehman Brothers and other Financial Institutions have suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth, so will go our current political parties unless they recognise and lead by example, the modern, well educated people that is Ireland Inc.

I grew up in the Ballyfermot of the 60’s and 70’s. On my way to secondary school I passed the local “FAS” centre (then ANCO) and watched through the large glass windows, years and years of lads being taught how to lay bricks, build a wall and knocking it down only to build it up again.............and this at a time when the only building jobs were in England!!

Our current “solutions” border on the same level of limited thinking..............more training (necessary but insufficient and definitely not a short to medium term solution) and “moving up the value
chain” (what about the 20-30% who will never be knowledge workers capable of moving up the value chain, at least not for the next 50 years or never if we fail to help those with special needs!

I have long believed that coalition of experienced business executives could add some tremendous value to building and better shaping Ireland Inc. than many of the people currently tasked with this challenge.

In light of current events I thought it might be a good time to try something along these lines and we have set up a group on the business networking site, LinkedIn, which seems a perfect place to get things started. To date we have had a huge response and many of the national radio stations have picked up on it including Mid West Radio who did an on-air interview with myself on their current affairs program, “Tommy Marren” this morning.

Given my own particular interests, I believe that we have a tremendous competence in the private sector of managing large, complex national and multinational business but the evidence as presented in our public sector shows us to be bordering on a third world country.

With all due respect to the political, academic and consulting advisors who provide certain but insufficient expertise, I’d like to see a “board of expert practitioners” available to the government to bring real expertise to solving many of the problems that exist in the economy.

I have set up a Blog http://rebuildingirelandinc.blogspot.com/ and a group on Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1801970&trk=hb_side_g