Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We need bang for our buck. When an agency is given the type of budget Enterprise Ireland is given, I think I speak for people with common sense when I say that a yield in 2011 of six jobs is farcical and that a yield of 3,346 jobs is a whole pile better but is still not very promising. I do not know where the links have broken down. I will spare the political criticisms for those who deserve them. I wonder where this figure of 100,000 jobs has come from. Enterprise Ireland has a projected figure for this year in terms of new jobs. It will not go beyond that. All of that is alarming.

I would like to think that when the three-year plan is completed, Enterprise Ireland might come back to us to revisit this situation, because the value of its work - leaving aside the commercial interests, because businesses will obviously have their own legitimate key performance indicators in terms of Enterprise Ireland and how it is doing - for taxpayers and citizens will be called on the basis of job creation. That will be the bottom line for people. I have said my piece. Those figures are far from satisfactory.