Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome the opportunity to speak on the spring economic statement. The first thing we must acknowledge is that it is not a budget. It is a timely economic statement and a necessary development which outlines our current situation and future development and policy opportunities. It is an opportunity to set out our stall for the next couple of years. It is true that much has been achieved over the past two to three years. The unemployment rate has gone from 15% to 10% according to the figures published yesterday by the CSO. More than 140,000 people have left the live register to take up employment in the past 12 months. Almost 100,000 new jobs have been created since 2011. There are more people at work now than there has been for years. This is evidenced by the increase in the Exchequer returns at a time when, after the last budget, the tax rate was reduced marginally. More people are at work and they are earning more. There is a recovery. It is fragile, but it exists.

The rate of emigration has declined and the gap between those leaving and those returning is narrower than it has been in almost a decade. Net outward migration is due to cease next year. We look forward to welcoming home many of those people who left our areas, constituencies and parishes over the past seven or eight years and to giving them the opportunity to say Ireland is a place that can welcome them back, provide them and their families with a living and sustain them and their communities beyond 2020.

The public finances have been stabilised and this economy is currently the fastest growing economy in Europe with almost 5% growth this year and very sustainable growth projected at approximately 3.25% to 3.5% per annum up to 2020. This assumes that there will be no international setbacks but it is a relatively stable projection. The deficit will fall below 3% this year and we look forward to not having to borrow for current expenditure next year.

That is the context in which these statements are being made and which gives me pleasure to take part in these spring statements. However, where to from here? There is not a single Member in this House naive enough to believe that all is rosy in the garden, that all is well and that things will be great for our country in 2016 and beyond without addressing some huge challenges which remain. These will only be addressed by determined, stable, cohesive and sustainable policies and decisions taken now, next October and in the years beyond. Some incredibly difficult issues remain and these will have to be addressed in the coming months and years if we are to fashion this recovery for all sectors of our society.

We have an enormous problem in this country with jobless households. This did not arrive by accident. It is not a vagary of Irish society. This was a result of ill-thought out and lazy policy decisions taken since the late 1990s to the advent of the economic crash. When we saw a social problem in this country, because we had it we threw money at it. We abandoned sections of our society to poverty traps and dependency on the State. This was ill-conceived and has manifested itself as a stubborn issue that refuses to go away. We will have to address future policy proposals in the next few months, the next budget and the next few years. We need to make work pay for those already at work. We need to make work pay more than welfare by continuing to close down welfare traps. We need to break the cycle of intergenerational joblessness and poverty by helping vulnerable people who can and wish to get back to work. Poverty, including child poverty, remains an issue, but the most immediate way to address this is to create work that will pay more than social protection and by making the recovery a nationwide one.

As Deputy Ó Cuív rightly mentioned, rural Ireland has lost a generation. Much of this is well understood, but the reason it lost a generation is to be found in irresponsible Fianna Fáil led Government decisions and policies. These decisions and policies created a pyramid scheme in the construction sector which inevitably collapsed. There is not a parish in the country that has not lost a generation of its most active young men and women to foreign shores because there was no other alternative. These people had no other skill. The only world they knew was the construction sector. It abandoned them and they had to abandon Ireland and leave.

It is for this reason that rural demand is at a low ebb and there is such pressure on small schools. The latter is not due to a lack of investment, but to a lack of children.

We have lost 20 or 24 post offices in the past four years compared with the almost 1,000 lost in the preceding decade. Business has been falling because the younger generation has left. In the years to 2020, our challenge is to create a rural economy and society that is welcoming and can support those people and their families. Deputy Ó Cuív rightly stated that this could only be achieved through investment in ICT services. I am pleased that the national broadband plan, which is supported by almost €800 million, will provide public investment and deliver a minimum of 30 Mbps to every household by 2020. This is crucial. We will not attract back the brightest and best if we cannot support them in driving an economy.

Many reports to be published in the next year or two will have a major impact on short-term policy. We expect the report of the low pay commission to be published in mid-July. The signing of the JobPath contracts will provide in-depth work on a case-by-case basis for 100,000 of our long-term unemployed and, I hope, deliver major results in returning that cohort of vulnerable people to the labour market. This is a significant challenge.

The roll-out of the housing assistance payment is ongoing. People should not be afraid that taking up work will lose them their housing supports. As they earn more and the economy recovers, those supports will remain and be reflected in their household incomes.

We look forward to the publication of the Mangan report and to the conclusion of the expert group on child care. Investment in underfunded child care services is a major issue and will address one of our greatest poverty traps, that being, the lone parents allowance system.

We have made considerable advances and west Cork has benefited. Almost 12% fewer people are unemployed in Cork county than there was in 2014, equating to 14.5% fewer in Bandon, 10% fewer in Bantry, almost 15% fewer in Clonakilty, almost 10.5% fewer in Kinsale and 10.5% fewer in Skibbereen. The chambers of commerce got these figures from the Central Statistics Office.

The message I would like to see being put forward in the spring statement is that a fragile recovery is under way and major decisions are yet to be taken. There is an alternative. Those on the Opposition benches are providing them, namely, more of the same by throwing more money into dependency and the abandonment of families and creating more poverty traps. That mistake was made in the late 1990s, but the Opposition continues propagating the same outdated policies. Those policies created significant issues for the country and will not allow for a recovery across all sectors.

I thank the Acting Chairman for this opportunity and look forward to the many reports in the coming months that will address social protection, in particular, and poverty traps.

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