Jobs, jobs, jobs......but really how many?

You just knew that there was a jobs announcement on the way when FOUR Ministers turned up in Waterford City at the start of last week. Like London Buses you wait forever for one to arrive and then four arrive all at once, and before you know it they are off again tearing away at breakneck speed. However, as RTE were covering this jobs announcement it was going to be a very safe bet that some of our senior people from Dáil Éireann would turn up. But I have rarely seen such a large number of Ministers descend on our City so there MUST have been good news in the offing.

The jobs announcements last week are most welcome for Waterford City, Waterford County and of course the greater wider SE region. With Eishtec expanding into Clonmel they must now be one of the largest employers in the region, if not Ireland, with circa 1300 employees. And to think that this company literally rose out of the ashes of Talk Talk a number of years ago. With centres in Waterford, Wexford, Craigavon and now Clonmel this business is on an upward curve.

I still vividly recall the announcement that Talk Talk was to close in Waterford City. This after all was a very profitable company and a company competing very favourably in what is a very demanding and tough market sector. The Talk Talk closure affected the whole SE region and I remember after the closure collating stats to aid sourcing training grants and I was amazed by the numbers of people this company employed right across the region. This was a prime example at how a Waterford City based company created employment throughout the whole SE region.

In addition to the Eishtec news we heard of jobs being created by Bluefin, a company created from Red Hat, which was formally known as Feed Henry. A success story from TSSG, and there have in fact been many recent success stories from this operation and I have no doubt that there will be many more. The TSSG and ArcLabs resource in the WIT Carriganore Campus are literally beavering away creating ideas and future employment. It is a facility that should be more loudly promoted and championed for Waterford City.

As you can read I am extremely positive about any new jobs announcement for Waterford and the wider SE region, though I often do believe that there should be more emphasis put on the actual jobs created and not the projected jobs that might be created. We live in the present and it is present jobs that Waterford and the region require and future jobs are encouraging but far too often the larger number is always produced simply, I feel, to make the announcements “beefier”. After all every single business could project a future employee statistics but just how many of these claims are actually attainable or measured for that matter?

I assume that we are “sold” the value of the IDA’s investment based on these projected figures and I also assume that “grant aid” is based on said larger figure. Though due to the sensitive nature of IDA client discussion we will never really know what grant aid companies actually get or receive. There is no individual breakdown outside of the IDA so it is impossible to find out or estimate. It would be interesting for bodies such as the IDA to release a comparison showing whether or not these projected figures are actually attained or bettered, then we would know if we were getting value for our tax payers Euro. We know that to attract FDI here the IDA have to work very hard and they, I assume, have to be very creative with their grant funding and each FDI get a bespoke grant package that suits their own business model.

The creation of jobs is to be welcomed at all levels but more importantly for Waterford and the SE we need to realise jobs that create enough disposable income so as to have a positive effect on our localised economy. At the present moment in time the SE has one of the lowest disposable incomes in Ireland and that is not good for our economy no matter what spin you place on this argument. The very low disposable income is reflected on websites such as the Pobal Deprivation Index that clearly show Waterford and the SE need jobs that reflect higher wages and therefore higher disposable income spend.  

It is quite simple. If you have €50 of disposable income available a week you can only spend €50 of your disposable income. However, if we all had €500 of disposable income available every week then we would have a burgeoning local economy and our “colour” on the Deprivation Index would be greatly different.

We are lead to believe that the current Government are the party of Small Business and yet I see on a day to day basis very little evidence of this on the ground here in Waterford. For SME’s there are no IDA grants, very little if any EI grants and other grants are difficult to access if your business does not fit a very tight and defined selection criteria. This has to change to allow SME’s to survive and ultimately employ more people, and more importantly employ more people and give them a higher disposable income to spend locally.

To date if you are an SME in Waterford, and the majority of businesses in Ireland are classed as SME’s, there is very little support for you in terms of accessing grant aid or business funding. Yet we see hundreds of millions invested into FDI’s, which is good, but is this at the detriment to others. Surely, we must see a balanced and regional solution to grant aid and ultimately investing in our City’s future. This is not happening and if we are to return “a party of business” to Dáil Éireann at the next election then we must start to hear and read about how they are going to secure SME’s investment funding for our City, County and the greater SE region.

Do we see this Government making it less expensive to run and operate a business? No! Do we see this Government pressing local authorities to significantly reduce Commercial Rates? No! Do we see this Government creating regional solutions that will help Waterford compete with other population centres? No! And yet come to Ireland as a multi-national and we will open our doors to you and give you grants, we will give you money and so on. Really the see-saw of support investment has to be balance and balanced in favour of small business.

Waterford of all the cities in Ireland needs immediate financial help, assistance and with an election on the way you might just see more and more bus loads Ministers coming down the M9/N9 to champion their case for election to the next Government.

Be wise in what you ask them and be even wiser in deciphering what they promise. Will we ever learn from history – well time will tell.