Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

The focus of the Minister's speech was on what a great economy we have. None of us doubts that jobs are being created all of the time. We should not use the data to sing the praises of the economy, however, without analysing them. There is little reason for gathering them in the first place if we are not going to use them.

We can see from the data there is a significant increase in the number of women participating in the work force. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that there will be increased child care needs. Even though this data is published quarterly, it took a by-election and the opportunity afforded to the public to take ownership of the issue for that issue to be taken seriously. We will see if the issue is dealt with in the budget but there is no doubt that the lack of affordable child care is an impediment to the participation of women in the work force.

Why do we always have to get to a crisis before we deal with it? We can anticipate it and see it jumping out off the page, as is the case with congestion. All one has to do is go out any morning on to the N1, N2, N3, N4, and the N7. People are living very far away from where they are working, yet the report shows that the lowest level of unemployment is in the mid-east region. People are moving further away from their work place and are struggling with the congestion, which is having a bearing on the quality of their lives and their communities. With women participating to an ever greater extent in the workforce, communities are losing people who would otherwise be volunteering. Resident and voluntary group meetings are dominated by women. If we want to build solid communities, that volunteering time must be replaced in a more structured way.

When a company is locating its business in an area, the quality of the living environment there has a direct bearing on its decision. Companies such Intel and Hewlett Packard, which are located in my area, tell me exactly that. Child care, transport and accommodation jump out of this report as issues that must be addressed beyond the statistics on who is working, where they are working and the increase in the numbers of those employed.

About 13 years ago, the Dublin transportation initiative was begun after the Government informed the European Union that congestion was a serious impediment to the progress of the economy. I wish we could only roll back the clock to those levels of congestion because we are seriously beyond the point of gridlock. It typically takes an hour to drive four or miles at peak times, which is absolutely untenable.

Professor Joe Lee recently spoke about a sense of place and how we had lost it. He said that we had become a nation of consumers and producers, where only one generation was involved, with no place for the old and the young. That is a fair description of what is happening. The public is way ahead on this and people see that there must be a connection between building an economy and building a society. They want to see what the Government claims is a great economy turned into a quality of life, with improved transport, child care and a reduction in accommodation costs.

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