Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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What is the timescale for Eurofound’s report? How many people were surveyed in Ireland and other EU member states? The quality of jobs was referred to, which is a difficult issue for us. The numbers on the live register in Dublin South West, the constituency which I represent, have been dropping over the past several months.

The number on the live register has been dropping for the past few months which would suggest more jobs are coming on stream but we have also changed how we quantify jobs - people might be on schemes and so on. One cannot compare the system last year with this year. Our difficulty is that we do not know the quality of the jobs. There is no way within the current structures to measure that.

I am interested in what Mr. Menéndez-Valdés said about people’s satisfaction and their trust in public services. If the survey is done at a specific time, for example, in respect of education, if one’s child is returning to school in September and one has to buy a uniform and books, one’s satisfaction with that system would probably be skewed. Are there other factors we can take into account? He says Ireland is above average, relative to other European countries, in offering poor quality jobs, scoring low in terms of pay, prospects, intrinsic job quality and so on. Does he have any idea why? Do we encourage a race to the bottom?