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

I would like to tease that issue out given the time and it could have such an impact. However, in relation to employment growth, and looking at the year on year figures - the graph looks really healthy and it is great to see the live register numbers coming down - one of the concerns is this mythical 60,000 jobs created last year. I know there was revision of the calculations based on the census. It is unlikely that those jobs were actually created.

They were probably underestimated previously. If we look at the national household survey for the end of last year and the number of people in employment compared to the end of the second quarter, we see a growth in employment of about 7,000 in six months. Is that type of growth an issue of concern? The figures for the end of quarter two showed that 1.909 million people were employed, while at the end of quarter four the figure was 1.901 million. Those figures are from the national household survey.