COVID-19 has posed an unprecedented challenge to Irish society and the Irish Government, ranging from the immediate health issues to how society will manage in the future and how Irish businesses will manage in this environment.
Whilst Ireland hasn’t been faced with this particular challenge in the past, we have demonstrated on a number of occasions over the past 30 years or so our capacity to pick ourselves up and recover from very difficult challenges. Ireland has done this by making many good strategic and operational decisions and learning many lessons along the way.
Responding to this challenge will be like running a marathon rather than a sprint, with an immediate and pressing challenge of getting a significant proportion of Irish businesses off their knees and into the race. It is too early to say precisely what impact COVID-19 will have in the medium to longer term on the way society will work and how business will be done domestically and internationally. Thus we will need to be adaptable and flexible and make strategic investments in areas that allow the country to respond to the challenges and opportunities that will arise.
To support this critical agenda, we have compiled a number of suggested measures, which we have shared with the Department of Finance, designed to build on the measures already announced by the Government on May 2nd and those made both prior and subsequent to that date.
These measures are structured into two categories:
Rebooting the economy:
To reboot the economy, we are suggesting:
- Some taxation measures to boost cashflow and profitability,
- Incentives for private capital to provide equity funding to businesses most affected by the crisis,
- The closing of gaps in coverage from existing support schemes, and doing so in a manner that does not require enabling legislation,
- Extending the range of liquidity providers,
- Ideas to facilitate more rapid deployment of supports, and
- A proposal for the provision of compensation to affected businesses for lost profits based on a simplified business interruption model.
Jobs and growth:
From a more medium and longer-term perspective, we have categorised our thoughts and suggestions under four key themes.
- Retaining attractiveness to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in a post Covid-19 and post Brexit world,
- Becoming more digitalized,
- Growing in an environmentally sustainable manner,
- Accelerator hubs for start-ups via linkages with MNC’s and Universities.
To read the measures in more detail, please download our report.
