22.11.2011
“what we see today is a further dismantlement of the Public Capital Investment Programme and ‘more of the same’ in terms of the absence of detail and the attempts to ‘talk up’ the State’s plans”
The Government has been accused of trying to create an illusion that there is an ambitious long-term Public Capital Programme in place when the bottom line is that infrastructure investment is being decimated through cutbacks of €1.3 billion over the next two years. This is according to the construction employer’s body, CIF, which has said that the inclusion of indicative figures for 2015 and 2016 could be interpreted as a cynical exercise aimed at ‘talking up’ the State’s plans. The Programme, according to CIF Director General Tom Parlon, ‘lacks credibility given the absence of detail in respect of the capital projects pipeline’.
CIF had last week criticised the Government’s decision to reduce overall capital investment in the economy by €1.4 billion over the period 2012 to 2015, with €1.3 billion of the reduction occurring over the next two years, as a ‘a u-turn’ in terms of the Government’s promise to prioritise job retention and creation and a mistake from the perspective of the longer-term growth potential of the Irish economy.
Speaking following announcement of the revised Investment Programme, CIF Director General Tom Parlon said:
“Regretfully, what we see today is a further dismantlement of the Public Capital Investment Programme and ‘more of the same’ in terms of the absence of detail and the attempts to ‘talk up’ the State’s plans when the reality is that in 2012 and 2013 €1.3 billion will cut from an already severely curtailed investment programme. It should be borne in mind that less than half of the headline figures contained in this announcement relate to actual infrastructure and construction investment, with much of the rest being diverted to pay for imported buses, trains and other equipments and thereby to support jobs in other countries. There is no indication whether and how labour intensive and low import infrastructure and construction projects are being prioritised”.
Continuing Mr. Parlon said:
“The inclusion of indicative budgets up to 2016 is, in the absence of a list of projects and timescale for their delivery, disingenuous. It is striking that whilst the Capital Programme has been subject to three major reviews since the beginning of the economic crisis it is still impossible to get a meaningful breakdown of planned investment or visibility of the capital projects pipeline, which totally undermines its credibility.”
Missed opportunity to encourage domestic economic recovery
“Infrastructure projects are labour intensive and, in Ireland, have low import content so the effects of these cuts will be felt across the domestic economy. The fact that the Programme is so reduced in 2012 and 2013 will inevitably result in additional job losses across the construction supply chain and in the wider economy. CIF expects that 26,000 direct construction jobs will be lost next year, which is the equivalent to 500 for each week of 2012. It seems that the Government deemed it less politically risky to abandon these jobs than to look at additional savings in current budgets in which excess and duplication have been highlighted on a huge scale”.
Demonstrable need
“Ireland continues to have a demonstrable need across practically all public infrastructure headings. The decision to stop all but a handful of politically sensitive projects has serious consequences. It will inevitably impact the type of recovery that Ireland experiences in the future and undermine the basis for sustainable employment growth”.
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Source: CIF Website - 11/10/11 |
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