Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Why does the Minister forecast that unemployment will be worse in 2015? He is forecasting that it will be 12.8%, compared to the 11.7% he forecast last year.

The other issue I have is with regard to the growth forecasts from 2013 to 2015. Last year the Minister forecast growth of 2.2% for 2013, but this has now been revised downwards to 1.3%. For 2014 the forecast was 3%, which is now down to 2.4%, and for 2015 it was 3%, which is now down to 2%. If one takes these in combination, over those three years we would have seen a cumulative growth rate of 8.2%, but now the Minister has revised that down to 6.5%. Does the Minister not believe there is a need for a stimulus in the economy? One can see that in terms of exports. The value of exports in 2002 was the same as the value of exports today, yet we have an unemployment level that is three times what we had then. We need an injection into the domestic economy and that is where the Minister's policy is failing. The fact that he is projecting a higher rate of unemployment in 2015 than he did this time last year, despite all the work he claims the Government has done, is adequate evidence of that.