A RENEWED focus on green policies and 'energy technology' is the solution to Ireland's economic and environmental difficulties in the future, the Labour party was told at its annual conference yesterday.

Addressing the assembled delegates in Kilkenny, finance spokesperson Joan Burton said that energy technology should replace information technology as the driving force behind the country's now flailing economy.

"To get a depressed economy moving, you must have a stimulus, a new deal for new jobs," she said, advocating a carefully managed programme of public investment.

"Directed wisely, this economic stimulus could be the basis for a 'green new deal' for Ireland, creating jobs, leading to long-term prosperity, while helping us play our part in solving the climate crisis."

Deputy Burton championed retrofitting – the application of new technologies – as an example of recent success.

She said that Germany created 25,000 jobs by retrofitting some 200,000 apartments in a two-year period, while the UK is currently creating 10,000 jobs through a similar scheme.

"Ireland can do the same. Why abandon construction workers when the opportunity is there to use their skills to deliver environmental benefits at quite a modest cost," she said. "We can beat this recession in a way that reduces risks for our planet and sparks off a wave of investment which will create a more secure, cleaner and more attractive economy for us all."

In keeping with the prominent theme of economic finger-pointing and recovery, housing and local government spokesperson Ciarán Lynch criticised a policy of "uncontrolled and unregulated speculation in a property bubble".

"They [the government] behaved like junkies high on the property tax take, oblivious to the harm they were causing to the country as a whole," he said.

Lynch noted that couples today are facing costs of home purchase that "exceed 10 times the national industrial wage".

Siptu general president Jack O'Connor rounded on the banking sector and accused it of playing a fundamental role in the current state of the economy.

"There was no question as to accountability for the near ruination of our economy, the generation of one of the highest levels of private debt in the world, or the condemnation of tens of thousands of ordinary families to a life servicing crippling mortgage payments," he said.

"This was a result of having to bid against each other for unsustainable 100% mortgages, all to make speculators, developers and bankers rich beyond their wildest dreams."