David McWilliams, that eternal doomsayer, has an interesting post on his blog recently. Here’s a snippit that sums up his view:
We have already seen how the slump in stamp duty has affected the coffers. But long-term, no country ever got rich by its people buying and selling property to each other with money borrowed from foreigners.
While I’m not an economist, I’m not sure that I completely agree with this argument. Sure, property has been bought with money borrowed from foreigners, but it will be repaid (hopefully) to those foreigners from salaries earned by selling goods and services on the international market. Granted that an internal property market per se is not a desirable thing, but surely it’s symptomatic of the behaviour of the wider economy.
On top of his usual doom-and-gloom, he does offer some hope for the future, and SFI gets an honourable mention:
Ireland has so much to offer risk takers – both our own and international – in terms of raw material. For example, Science Foundation Ireland is slated to invest €7 billion in scientific research over the next ten years. This will go to waste unless we also bring in the necessary commercial skills that can harness this research and build it into something that will be for sale. The idea should be to build companies of our own rather than just being a conveyor belt of talent for the multinationals.
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.
It’s worth pointing out that SFI’s budget is nothing close to €7billion over the next ten years. According to the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, 2006-2013, SFI has an allocation of €1.4 b|n – a far sight from €7 b|n. Also worth noting is that that the current SSTI expires in 2013. I don’t believe that plans or budgets have been allocated beyond that – certainly not to 2018 as McWilliams implies.
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