Niall Collins (Limerick West, Fianna Fail)

At the outset, with the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's permission, I wish to concur with the remarks made by Deputy Peter Power about the Taoiseach and to thank the Taoiseach for his enormous contribution to Ireland during his time in that office. I received many messages this morning which I will convey to him.

I am glad of the opportunity to speak in favour of the Government amendment to the motion. The motion states there has been an increase in the live register of 16,300 persons, but it is important to note that the live register is not designed to measure unemployment. It also includes part-time workers, those who work up to three days a week and seasonal and casual workers entitled to job-seekers benefit and allowance. Unemployment is measured effectively by the Quarterly National Household Survey. In that respect, the live register is a crude measure with which to gauge an economy, because it includes people who are working in various forms or who are entitled to benefits for part-time work.

The mid-west region and County Limerick, my area, has suffered some job losses in recent years, but to the credit of the Government and this and previous Ministers we have policies in place which are effective at finding replacement jobs and industries for the region. I note the Fine Gael motion does not mention any particular job losses in the area. It mentions a number of areas around the country, but does not mention any in my constituency or within the mid-west region. There have been job losses within the constituency, but the jobs were replaced.

Recently, the local development agency, Shannon Development Company, in conjunction with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, announced 250 jobs in Shannon with Zimmer and an additional 75 jobs with a health care company, Vistacon, in Limerick. We also got good news through An Bord Pleanála that the Shannon LNG project has received planning permission at the Shannon Development land bank in Tarbert in north Kerry, which is adjacent to my constituency in Limerick. That development will provide an estimated 650 construction jobs over a four year period and between 50 and 100 permanent jobs when the plant becomes operational.

We must guard against talking our economy down. In the previous severe recession in the UK, many commentators talked down the economy there and created significant hysteria. We must guard against that happening here. We are far from that scenario and the message should not go out from this House that we face that scenario. IBEC is a fair-minded, independent organisation that represents over 7,000 employers and is on the record as stating that the level of investment being made by US companies here is staggering. It stated that corporate America's investment position in Ireland was €52.5 billion in 2006. This is significantly ahead of investment by US companies in China, Russia, India and Brazil, which, combined, stands at €45.6 million.

From this point of view, we should not talk our economy down or send out the wrong message. We must act responsibly. The policies and principles are in place. The Minister for Finance is well placed, through the Finance Acts, to take the hard and capable decisions needed. We took the tough decisions after the general election in 2002 when the economy dipped a bit. We are now in a similar scenario and will take the tough decisions to get the economy right and let it rebound.

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