A bloody stupid idea from Fine Gael

Thanks to MJ for pointing this out:

I would like to direct you to point 1.2.8 in the FG manifesto - "Merge all city and county enterprise boards into Local Government"
There are 35 County and City Enterprise Boards (CEBs) located in each Local
Government area.....It cost nearly €40 million to administer the City and County Enterprise Boards over the past three years. These savings could be used to help fund the merging of responsibilities and staff into the Local Government structure."

I then found this on the FG website - taken from their SME Survival Package:

Fine Gael has already proposed in its ‘Power to the People’ document to merge
the City & County Enterprise Boards along with numerous other local and
national agencies into the local government structure to form new ’Business &
Employment Units’ within local authorities....will infuse local authorities a new enterprise focus.  
Local authorities will be allowed greater flexibility in determining grant limits, thresholds and the type of companies that may be supported

What is wrong with this, surely saving money is a good idea? Yes it is and there is no doubt that the current system for CEB's could be improved.

However - have you ever dealt with a City or County Council? They are pretty much the exact opposite of an entrepreneurial enterprise in almost every respect. One of the reasons for putting CEB's outside of the Local Authority Structure was to ensure that entrepreneurs did not have to deal with the same structure that handled their motor tax, their planning and their rubbish collection.

The ideas that

• you would save e40m (unless existing staff take on the roles now done by CEB staff, unlikely) and
• you would give the Local Authority a new enterprise focus  - eh, no. They are permanent staff with pensions and grades.

are laughable. A one stop shop (also mentioned in the document) is a better idea. The current system is too fragmented. But for the reasons given not a good idea in the CoCo.

And giving them more flexibility in who they give money to? You may as well **** your cash away. The restrictions (a major pain at times) are there for mostly good reasons - among other things they help to focus a very limited resource being cash grants.

Go revisit this element of your strategy Fine Gael and involve people who know what they are talking about.

keith

[Disclosure - I worked in Kilkenny CEB for 3.5 years and have a number of CEB's as clients. I have also done some work for the National CEB association. That experience has left me in a position to be constructive in my observations - not biased. I am no apologist for bureaucracy.]

Comments

[Paul Brett]

Thanks for this Keith, one major fault with political partys/government bodies is that they do not consult with people on the ground. To merge the CEBs into local govenrment would destory our easy of access to vital resources.