Fermanagh/ South Tyrone MLA Tommy Gallagher
SDLP Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Tommy Gallagher has urged the government to give stronger support to small firms after a report showed that smaller companies have little awareness of how to access help.
Mr Gallagher said: “In Fermanagh and Tyrone there is great potential for the small businesses sector to grow faster but a clearer support mechanism needs to be put in place by government in order for them to expand.
“Many of our small companies have had to go it alone when setting up having been told that they didn’t meet the criteria for financial support.
“Some of them have now become the mainstay of local economies.
“The Department of Employment and Learning must take this report on board and create a better source of advice for small enterprises.
“Investment in our small firms will provide a good return for government by getting more people jobs, preventing our young people moving out of the area and by putting boosting the local economy.
“We can’t afford for any more of our small businesses to close down.”
Cowen has become a Taoiseach on borrowed time
The dust has settled a bit and the weekend reports on how the government reshuffle has been viewed by the Irish public is very clear from the polls.
Up here in the North West, Mary C got a reprieve from the executioner’s chair and got moved to Education. She will need all of her ear muffs to stifle the nightmares that will accrue from the incessant banter of the teachers unions, who seem to think that they are the only public servants facing the recession head on.
In some ways, they both deserve each other. The Greens party convention ended yesterday with John Gormley sounding as plausible as a duck denying the existence of water on RTE’s Week in Politics last night.
It’s pretty pathetic all round. Messiah Enda and his Fine Gael chums will have to make some real decisions when they get into government and one just wonders, how they will tackle the big issues.
They are entitled on the balance of natural justice to be the leaders of the next big cock-up in Irish politics. The wish to hang onto power for the sake of getting the country back into shape is poor and pathetic.
The honourable thing for Fianna Fail to have done, was to take their loss on the chin, get back to brass tacks, figure out how they were so easily taken over by developers and greedy parasites and ensure that they realise that they are not the chosen one’s to rule this country of ours any more.
They have to earn the title and after the next election, that might be at least two elections away, unless the coalition partners are as effective in government, as they have been in opposition.
At this stage, most people do not care anymore about who is running the country and most have forgotten the sacrifices that were made to allow democracy manifest itself here in the first place.