Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We must remember that this was only four years ago. When I read the spring economic statement this week and consider the progress we as a country have made in that period, it is not difficult to understand why the economy is now the envy of our partners in Europe. The Opposition parties are in denial. It does not suit their political aims to have an economy that is growing or a people who are finding their feet again. If we had followed the advice of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil, I dread to think of where we would be today. Their advice was to default or leave the eurozone. They were prepared to walk away from 40 years of economic progress in Europe.

Where are we today? The facts speak for themselves. The bailout is over. Austerity is over. The troika is gone. Our economy is growing. I know better than most that the recovery is both fragile and weak and is not yet secure. I meet people every week who continue to suffer as a direct result of the collapse of the economy. I hear stories of families struggling to make ends meet and parents missing their children who have had to emigrate to find work. Too many people are still out of work. The people of Ireland have made great sacrifices over the past four years for the sake of Ireland. We must never forget that. They must be rewarded for their hard work and determination. It has been proven time and again, and I see it every week in my clinics in Dundalk and other parts of Louth, that people who have secured jobs are the ones who are starting to reap the benefits of the recovery that is taking place. In Dundalk alone there have been more than 1,000 new jobs announced by companies such as eBay, PayPal, Prometric and SalesSense, to name a few. The unemployment rate has fallen by almost 30% and by almost 24% in Ardee and in Drogheda, respectively. To put this in perspective, the number of people who have come off the live register in County Louth over the past four years is almost 3,500.

We know this is still not enough. This Government has set out a clear plan to get Ireland out of the mess left behind by the Fianna Fáil economic crash, namely, the creation of sustainable jobs. Our spring economic statement has set out a four-year plan with clear targets for jobs creation, including 100,000 new jobs over the coming months, which is one year ahead of plan. By the end of next year we will have net immigration and by 2018 we will have replaced every job lost due to the Fianna Fáil economic crash. By 2019 we will have more people in employment in this country than ever before.

We are driving towards an economy that will have full employment and in which every person who wants to work will work. The Government and I know that these targets are ambitious but we also know they are achievable. We plan to grow the economy by between 3% and 3.5% each year. There will be no more boom and bust cycles. As the Taoiseach said, we are never going back to the "when we have it, we spend it" approach of Fianna Fáil and nor will we follow the "even if we don't have it, we'll spend it" approach advocated by Sinn Féin. Our economic plan offers reward for hard work and not quick profits for speculation.

The universal social charge was introduced by Fianna Fáil. I am pleased to see that we are now starting the process of phasing it out of our tax system. In our first budget we removed more than 330,000 low-income families from the universal social charge net and in the previous budget we removed a further 80,000. By the next budget, we will have removed more than 500,000 people from its net.

I am pleased with the progress we are making but understand that more needs to be done. The people have a very clear choice moving forward. They can choose a stable government that will secure our recovery or a government that will wreck our future with populist promises it simply cannot keep.

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