Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Labour Party for sharing time with me this evening and on many other occasions recently, and commend Deputy Penrose and his colleagues for tabling this important motion.

Much of the discussion in the lead-up to budget 2009 has centred short-sightedly on the need for cuts to public spending and a stimulus package for the plummeting property market. The crucial area of job creation and enterprise has been overlooked as the main means of rebuilding our struggling economy. With unemployment at its highest levels in a decade and certain to increase next year, the Government's options for raising revenue will continue to be seriously curtailed unless a strategy can be put in place to put more people in employment, thereby increasing direct revenue returns and lessening the drain on public resources through social welfare payments.

While every sector is being hit by job losses — as the motion correctly points out, announcements of redundancies in the manufacturing sector have become depressingly frequent — the construction sector has been worst affected. It is important to analyse how this sector managed to attract such large numbers of young people, particularly men, and was allowed to develop to the extent it did. In the ten-year period up to 2007, employee numbers in the industry soared from fewer than 100,000 to 260,000. At its peak, construction accounted for almost one quarter of all economic activity and much of the increase was driven by tax reliefs and property incentives offered by the Government.

The gross mutability of the construction sector allowed the Government, the heads of industry and the banks to profit from people getting themselves into debt to own a home. The aforementioned looked on as thousands of young people left their schooling prematurely to join what was at best a precarious industry to avail of opportunities which everyone involved knew could not last. In a reply to a recent parliamentary question, I was informed that approximately 50% of those who lost their jobs in construction in the past two years were aged under 25 years and a large percentage of them did not have a leaving certificate.

Another problem faced by those suffering the downturn in construction appears to be the large numbers who were forced into becoming C2 certificate holders, that is, self-employed, by employers who wished to avoid making basic payments on their behalf. In highlighting this phenomenon at the time, I stated it would cause problems later and, unfortunately, it appears that I was correct. I have been contacted by a number of constituents who have realised they do not have the basic PRSI levels required to avail of social welfare payments now that they are out of work.

It is essential that we help those who are becoming unemployed in the construction sector. A specific back to education scheme for construction sector workers aged under 25 must be introduced and the State must provide training and upskilling courses for alternative industries to construction through FÁS and third level institutions. It is also vital that retraining is provided in the area of construction to allow workers to continue in the energy saving and renewable energy sectors.

The predicament of C2 workers must be addressed. One initiative could be to allow stamps for the previous five years to be considered for welfare payments, rather than the two-year criterion currently applied. It is also essential that next year the Government frontloads infrastructure projects which can employ workers from the construction sector and increase our competitiveness, including transport, schools, creches, social housing and hospital building.

As indicated, the loss of jobs extends beyond construction. Our manufacturing sector has been hard pressed for a number of years. Last Friday, I listened with interest at an ISME conference as employers explained to a representative from a major bank how they had felt ignored by the banking sector in recent years. They described how tough it was to get start-up loans or loans for equipment and expansion and how the banks did not want to know them unless they were dealing in property. Unfortunately, we are all paying the price for the Government's love affair with property and speculators.

This does not mean, however, that we do not have the potential to turn around the economic crisis and start creating jobs as opposed to losing them. My party colleagues and I have highlighted in particular our underperforming indigenous export market. A report published by Forfás in 2006 showed that foreign-owned firms were responsible for 90.2% of exports from this State in that year. The value of these exports, which include manufacturing and internationally-traded services, amounted to €96.4 billion whereas the total value of exports of Irish-owned manufacturing and internationally-traded services firms amounted to only €10.5 billion. This area is crying out for Government intervention and stimulation.

The Government can take a number of initiatives to support the export market and stimulate jobs in the manufacturing sector. These include: helping Irish producers to access export markets outside the United States and Britain, for example, by providing language and local regulation supports; increasing the use of Irish embassies to access local market knowledge and management personnel; and increasing training of sales personnel with a good mix of industry background and technical knowledge.

Community employment schemes are another area of importance. These schemes are offered to unemployed workers at a marginally higher rate of payment than basic unemployment benefit. They can be useful for the community in terms of the service they provide, and to the individual by keeping him or her in work mode and offering new training. In seeking an increase in the number of CE schemes in the months ahead as the unemployment rate rises, I add a note of caution. Many of those who are losing their jobs have children in expensive child care facilities which they can no longer afford. Those entering community employment schemes will, therefore, require child care. More community-based child care places must be provided as a matter of urgency because the lack of affordable child care is one of the principal obstacles facing those who are seeking employment. Child care frequently costs the equivalent of a mortgage and families cannot afford to pay for it. I hope the Government will take serious action to tackle this problem in the months ahead.

With all the furore surrounding the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Act passed in the House last week, the people who are suffering most in these times of turmoil, namely, those who have lost their jobs or are on the of losing their jobs, are largely ignored. We in Sinn Féin were out first thing on Tuesday morning last calling for the Government to introduce a similar package of emergency measures to protect this group of people from home repossessions, and throughout last week we called on the Government to examine the issue of job losses.

This week, however, the headlines have changed as media reports focus on the budget deficit figure and what cuts will have to be made in next week's budget to manage the economy. If a decision can be made to secure a sector that benefited handsomely from the boom and was the cause of its own threatened demise — although I accept the necessity of the Government's decision of last week — it would be morally reprehensible not to invest the same effort and energy in solving unemployment and the problems faced by those who have become unemployed. I hope the Government takes due consideration of this fact before it formulates any cuts in social welfare next week or makes any decisions that could in any way affect the likelihood of jobs being made available next year, for example, by cutting infrastructure projects.

I look forward to the remainder of the debate and hope the House will pass this laudable motion. I commend Deputy Penrose and his colleagues for placing it before the House.

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