Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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As I said, of the 27 European Union countries the Commission is predicting that Ireland will have the third highest growth rate this year. This is the third consecutive year of growth in the economy, and growth generates jobs. The unemployment rate was at 15% when we came into office. It is now at the rate of 14% and it is going down progressively. However, there are some intractable problems in the jobs and labour market, in Ireland, one of which is the fact that the skills of the people who became unemployed quickly, the 200,000 who lost their jobs between 2008 and 2010, were related to the building industry and we are not going to regrow the building industry to the point where it was more than 20% of GDP. We are working on it.