Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Further to the question I asked earlier, I would be the first to be very proud of the achievements of the Department to date in becoming an active Department, in trying to deal with unemployment and in actively engaging in the myriad of programmes it has. In fairness, the Department has been transformed from being just a cheque issuing one to one which actively engages.

The Minister referred to people on the ground. The people in west Cork, including Mr. Sean Murphy and his team, are superb. I get great support from those kinds of people with employers who are frustrated trying to get employees. In the past week, I interviewed 12 random employers ranging from employers employing four to six people to 150 people and asked them what was their biggest concern ahead of the budget and what they would like me, as their representative, to feed into it. Ten out of 12 of them raised the issue of trying to get people off the dole and trying to get them to work. I do not think the issue is that welfare benefits are too generous. The issue I am trying to get at here is simply the black market combined with welfare. I wrote to the Economic Management Council expressing my concerns about this. The Taoiseach passed this on to the Minister in the past day or two days, so I appreciate she might not have seen this but, hopefully, it will be discussed by it.

There is an issue with which the Department of Social Protection will have to grapple which is that benefits cannot be looked at in isolation. They must be coupled with the black market economy where people are working two or three days a week for cash and retaining their benefits in full. It does not pay them to go into the workplace for €360 or €370 a week, the minimum wage jobs that are available, of which there are many and which are proving to be a difficulty for employers. I hope in the run-up to the budget and in the submissions with which we are dealing that the Minister would take on board that particular problem of the combination of welfare and the black market.