Sinn Féin spokesperson on enterprise, trade, and employment, Louise O’Reilly TD, has said government failure to deliver the right set of enabling conditions, as well as affordable housing, is damaging the economy and costing Ireland talent and investment.

Teachta O’Reilly:

“Almost weekly reports, data, or research is published outlining how the government’s failure to deliver the right set of enabling conditions is damaging the Irish economy. Whether it is energy, water, transport, or telecommunications, the failure over the past decade deliver high-quality infrastructure is having a critical impact on Ireland’s competitiveness.

“This is not only seriously impacting Ireland’s ability to support growth and productivity, but it is also affecting the ability to transform the economy to meet the digital and green transition. Business stakeholders have consistently pointed out that failing energy and water infrastructure is hurting Ireland’s ability to attract talent and FDI.

“All the while capital projects in energy and water have stalled – especially in the case of renewable energy and offshore renewable energy. The long-term economic impact of these failures cannot be understated.

“In a time of unprecedented uncertainty and accelerating change, Ireland needs deliver the right set of enabling conditions so we can secure the next generation of FDI in knowledge intensive sectors such as cleantech, renewables, GenAI and AI, machine learning, quantum computing, cell and gene therapy, and other forms of advanced personalised medicine.

“All of these sectors need world class energy, water, transport, and telecommunications infrastructure to operate, but they are not seeing it being delivered by government. As a result, Ireland is losing out on foreign direct investment as well as talent. 

“These headwinds are part of a broader government manufactured crisis affecting the Irish economy – the lack of affordable housing, failure to modify economic policies and strategies to compete with competitor states, a failure to invest in the SME sector to improve productivity and competitiveness, and regional connectivity, to name but a few. 

“For several years I have stated that the biggest threat to the Irish economy is the continuation of this government and their failing policies. Only a change of government can bring about the necessary changes to secure the future of the Irish economy.”