Challenges likely to remain for 2010

Challenges remain for all sectors in 2010


Tourism
Brian Quinn, FΡilte Ireland West
IT’S all about the economy stupid. If the economy picks up obviously tourism will pick up but it will be a difficult year. Tourism Ireland are hoping for a three per cent increase on 2009 but that is still way down on 2007. It will be a difficult year for people but it is all about the economy, if the economy picks up people will have more confidence to spend money. The biggest international markets for us are still the UK and America and they are still in recession and another big worry will be the loss of air access particularly from the transatlantic routes.
There are cut-backs in Aer Lingus and if you can’t get onto the island of Ireland you can’t spend money here. Ireland West Airport Knock seems to be doing well and winning some business as a result of difficulties in Shannon so that is good for the west of Ireland. All of our energies at the moment will be about helping businesses survive and managing our costs as much as possible. We have to help businesses who will be the quickest to recover to stay in operation and continue to be viable. We certainly have a new focus which is really about helping businesses survive the affects of 2009. But at the same time there will be a lot of money spent on marketing particularly, in the home market, where we will try to get Irish people to take more breaks at home. This has been very successful over the past two years and we will hope to build on that in 2010.

Trade Unions
Jerry King, IMPACT
2009 was the worst year for public servant workers and the public services since the foundation of the state. As a consequence of what has happened and the dehumanisation of public servants there will be inevitable consequences for 2010. First of all there will be various forms of industrial strike, services will deteriorate and worst of all there will be societal affects.
Every person in the state depends on public services but people have been let go in local authorities and not replaced. In times of recession our work load goes up because people use the public services more during a recession. We have less staff, our morale is at an all time low, and we have been cut extremely unfairly. The simple economic fact is people earning up to €70,000 per year recycle their money back into the community but people earning in excess of €100,000 will export that money out of the country on property. It is so unfair that people on €30,000 and €40,000 have nearly lost a quarter of their wages over that past two or three years. People don’t realise that in various county councils, you have MABS coming in and workers meet with them. As a consequence of that, it is inevitable there will be various forms of industrial action but we will have to respond in some way and can’t just watch as our income is unfairly eroded. The big danger for us is that in the next budget we will be targeted again. That is our big fear. When you put that all together I think that 2010 will be a complete and utter disaster for the public service.

Education
Sabina Munnelly, Principal St Brendan’s College, Belmullet
IN terms of cutbacks we have not been too badly hit here in St Brendan’s because we are in DEIS and that has cushioned the affects of the cutbacks. I feel that people will start to make better use of the resources they now have at their disposal to be honest like we would in our own homes.
At the frontline where the teachers teach our students, that does not seem to have been as badly affected as we feared it would at the beginning. The only thing that would impinge on the school has been the loss of four experienced teachers who retired and have not been replaced. They had roles of responsibility in the school which means that it falls on the back of senior management to carry on those duties. The job of the principal has got tougher and there are more jobs to do and that is not me pushing my case. In St Brendan’s, we are looking forward to the official opening of our new PE hall and school extension which has been fantastic for the students. It is fantastic to see the kids use the PE hall and having a safe facility to take part in PE. They really appreciate it and it has opened up a whole new life for them in terms of all the different sports they can play in the hall. Before they would have to go outdoors in very inclement weather. We were very lucky that we caught onto the coat-tails of the Celtic Tiger and were one of the last schools to get funded for the extension and the sports hall. We have been used to budgeting our resources and we never had much excess features.

Business
Sandra Cribbin, CEO, Ballina Chamber of Commerce
THE first couple of months are going to be very tough and for businesses at the minute it is all about survival and keeping the doors open. A lot of business have cut down their costs as much as possible and if they can maintain that they will survive and hope there will be some improvement at the end of the year.
Businesses have learned over the last couple of months how to make cost cuts and are running leaner businesses. They have learned a lot which should help them going into next year. But I still think there will be casualties because we are not out of the woods just yet. You would hope some of the steps taken in the budget will start to build up confidence and get people spending. If people can get some confidence we can improve. Businesses have learned a lot in the last year and are offering better value for money. It is not like a couple of months ago when people were saying they were being over-charged in the local towns. I think people need to look at home and realise that if they shop locally they can support locals business and that is how we can survive. If we want to have services in our local area we have to support them. Businesses need to be more positive and if we work together to keep their town on the map everyone will benefit. I do think in Ballina, businesses are coming together and that will work for us. The redevelopment of Pearse Street and projects like that will help improve the image of the town. We have a lot to sell and as long as we can keep investing in the town we will attract people.

Farming
Martin Gavin, Chairman, Mayo IFA
IT is hard to see 2010 being any other way but tough because farm incomes have gone so low it is hard to see anything but a significant increase making much of a difference. There is no doubt that 2009 was a really tough year because it was the year after farmers had made huge investments on waste management and there is a huge amount of debt on farms at the moment.
The message we would like to put out is that while farmers will be affected like any other sector of society and will fall on hard times, we will have to take a positive approach. Farm leaders need to keep farmers as positive as we can eventhough people may be in dire circumstances. The campaign that we embarked on last September after the scrapping of REPS 4 did pay off. I suppose Mayo would have been to the forefront of that and we feel the two Government TD’s did work hard for us. Okay, while we don’t know what the new scheme will be like it will be something we can work on and maybe we can build on. We are not saying we will be jumping up and down about it but there will be something there to battle for a lot of people at the same time. For 2010, we need to keep a positive approach to life because this will pass at some stage, some of us have lived through this before and we need to come out the other end.