Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this motion on unemployment and the budget. I thank Fine Gael for tabling such a relevant motion at this time.

Three weeks have elapsed since the coalition Government brought forward the earliest and probably the worst budget in the history of the State. The first two weeks of these three brought more than 40,000 people to the gates of the Dáil. Some 20,000 senior citizens braved the elements on two successive days to protest against the effective theft of the medical card from those over 70. Approximately 10,000 third level students quickly followed their elders to the barricades to protest against the attempt to reintroduce third level fees by the back door by way of stealth taxes. Some 12,000 parents, teachers and representatives of school management boards gathered together to protect the children of the nation against a range of insidious cutbacks in the classroom. Only a hasty U-turn by the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Hanafin, avoided the wrath of the disabled community this week. Next week, it may well be the farmers who will test the mettle of the rudderless coalition Government, whose members must now hang together or hang separately.

Virtually no sector of the community has escaped unscathed from the ill thought out budget and the most vulnerable and least well off seem to have suffered the brunt of the cutbacks, despite all that has been said to the contrary. The ultimate cutback, however, has resulted in unemployment. Workers have lost their jobs and have had their incomes wiped out and careers ruined. In many cases, their families suddenly became impoverished. For the unemployed, it is not a question of a soft or hard landing for the economy, of an international economic downturn or even of the country slipping into recession, as it has; rather, unemployment has been a traumatic, life-shattering experience for each of the nearly 100,000 workers who lost his or her job in the past 12 months. It will be such for another 100,000 who, according to the ESRI report, are to lose their jobs in the next 12 months. The wave of unemployment threatens to engulf spouses, children, friends, neighbours and the entire community. An intricate web of educational, cultural and sports experiences are shattered by unemployment.

The bail-out of the banks and financial institutions with an openended financial guarantee of taxpayers' money is the proud boast of this Government. However, when it comes to bailing out the tens of thousands of people who are becoming unemployed, the Government has no proud boast, creative ideas, sense of urgency or, worst of all, compassion. Spending on social welfare will increase in 2009 in line with the lengthening dole queues. The new unemployed will be allowed to slip into the limbo land of welfare and settle into long-term unemployment or emigration, as happened in previous decades and as recently as the 1980s. The humanity of the unemployed is greatly diminished in such circumstances.

There is no new provision for upskilling and no new range of FÁS courses is being put in place, nor is there any self-employment incentive or creative vision to channel the new unemployed into areas of development, training and education and towards new opportunities. The only action taken in the budget that impacts on the unemployed is a negative one. The budget doubles the length of time needed for the unemployed to qualify for the jobseeker's allowance from one to two years and thus makes it more difficult to access.

This is a Government bereft of ideas which is only intent on its own survival. The politics of self-preservation is the flip side of the politics of boom and greed and leads to lethargy and neglect of the people. At the EU summit of Heads of State held the day after the budget, the dazed Taoiseach and his Minister for Finance appeared not even to have been aware that the other EU states were fighting unemployment and tackling the credit crunch through member state and EU initiatives. For example, the European Investment Bank announced at the summit that it was making €30 billion available for small and medium-sized enterprises through low-interest loans to promote borrowing and through the circulation of money for investment in projects and enterprises, thus maintaining growth and protecting employment.

Small and medium enterprises are the backbone of all economies in terms of employment. It is time this Government came out of its bunker and began to offer leadership, direction and hope to the thousands of people its failed policies have driven into unemployment. If it cannot or is not willing to do so, it should step aside sooner rather than later.

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