Taoiseach Brian Cowen has launched the government’s framework for economic renewal.

Entitled Building Ireland’s Smart Economy : A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal, it sets out a number of priorities and actions that the Government will be taking in the short and medium term.

Key elements of the plan include stabilising public finances and improving competitiveness, supporting those who become unemployed, and supporting Irish business and multinational companies.

It also focuses on investing heavily in research and development, incentivising multinational companies to locate more R&D capacity in Ireland, and ensure the commercialisation and retaining of ideas that flow from that investment.

Details have also been put forward for implementing a ‘new green deal’ to move us away from fossil fuel-based energy production through investment in renewable energy and to promote the green enterprise sector and the creation of ‘green-collar’ jobs.

The government will also work towards supporting high-value innovation of products and services that will create hundreds of thriving Irish companies and associated employment.

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Priority will also be given to developing first-class infrastructure that will improve quality of life and increase the competitiveness of Irish business.

The Taoiseach said that there are a number of internal and external factors conspiring to give us the biggest economic challenge we have faced in a generation.

"We will eventually come through this. But I don’t want us to come through it, merely as a matter of surviving as best we can. I want us to come through it with a strengthened capacity to provide our citizens with enhanced opportunities and living standards.

"The framework is a combination of existing policies on which the government will build and new actions that will drive the restructuring of the economy. This combination is important because a principal objective is to reprioritise the business of government and to re-focus resources in a manner that will hasten economic renewal.

"A key feature of the smart economy is building the innovation or ‘ideas’ component of the economy through the utilisation of the knowledge, skills and creativity of people, and their ability and effectiveness in translating ideas into valuable processes, products and services."

The Taoiseach added: "I don’t want to mislead people into believing that this Framework we are launching today is an instant solution to all our problems.

"Many of the factors that will determine the timing and pace of the recovery, such as exchange and interest rates, are beyond our control. It is important, therefore, to emphasise today that there are no ‘magic bullets’ that can allow us to avoid the consequences of the international recession.

"But we refuse to simply weather the ‘perfect storm’ of negative international economic factors."

He said: "We will be engaging intensively with the Social Partners in the coming weeks on how we can devise a credible time frame in which to close the gap in the public finances. The end of year Exchequer returns will inform the discussion with the Social Partners, a process which I view as a problem solving process."

(PR)