Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Allow me to reply at least. We need to think outside the box in terms of significant unemployment. We could allow people to be excluded from work where we could not provide numbers. The Deputy is correct there was a crudeness about some of what we had to do, such as the moratorium, but these measures were necessary because the very economic survival of the country's depended on us balancing the books. Where we did not have the money to pay people on a full-time basis we had two options, one of which was not to do the work, and the statute law revision programme is not absolutely essential. It is the analysis of defunct legislation so we can take it off the Statute Book and make the Statute Book an easier job of work. It is good and important work. We have a waiting list of people and a competition for people to get into this. People want to do it. It is extraordinarily valuable work. I have met them and they are enthusiastic about it. They move on with the fact they worked in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform or with the Office of the Attorney General on their CVs and it is important. I simply think the Deputy is wrong in feeling people would be better off being excluded or on a make-work scheme where they do not do valuable stuff because it must be paid so they are given makey-uppy work, unreal work or unuseful work and this becomes acceptable. I do not know which of the two, whether there should be no JobBridge scheme or makey-uppy work JobBridge, is-----