Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

I am delighted to speak on this important and timely motion tabled by our spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment, Deputy Varadkar.

I wish to make one reference to the budget. When someone makes a mistake, he or she should stop digging. This budget is so flawed that at this stage the Government should throw it out and introduce a budget in the normal timeframe, which is early December. There is a reason for that. At that stage the Government has the facts in terms of the tax intake.

People will know the ROS system for filing tax returns and the majority of people use it. They will not file their returns until 17 November. People do not know the figures before then. When dealing with a budget and the current financial situation, it is extremely important to deal in facts. In the last budget for the current period, the Government projected a 3% increase in taxes. However, there will be a 10% decrease in taxes. The Government is projecting a 1% increase in taxes for 2009, but I do not believe that is correct, nor does anyone else. How can the Government expect people to have faith in a budget when the assumptions and everything else on which it is based are completely flawed? It fails in myriad areas.

What should a budget do? It should take account of the situation at hand. It should bring in policies that ensure the vulnerable are looked after, which the Government did not do. That has been demonstrated by the recent protests. A budget should ensure that we restore competitiveness, which the budget has not done. If anything, it has reduced it. Effectively, it will add 1.5% to the rate of inflation. It has done nothing in terms of freezing Government charges. From a regional perspective of where I live in Limerick, the Government has imposed a €10 air travel tax deliberately on people taking flights from Shannon, which will penalise the region. These measures depress consumer confidence. Even simple measures apart from those in the budget should have been taken to improve competitiveness. The price of diesel is 20% more than it should be relative to our EU partners, the price of petrol is 11% more and the price of heating oil is 13% more. Why is this the case? What is the Government doing about this? It is sitting on its hands. These are extremely important issues.

On the issue of providing greater support for business, to which Members have referred, one of the key factors affecting businesses is that people cannot get access to capital from the banks. Any measure that is considered in terms of the banks must ensure that funding is made available to the people on the ground. Overdraft facilities are been withdrawn on a daily basis from small businesses.

Utility costs are another factor. The ESB and Bord Gáis have today sought a 6% and 4% price increase, respectively. The Government should ensure that does not happen. Businesses cannot survive if they are not competitive.

In the seven years up to 2007, our competitiveness relative to our trading partners fell by 35%. Our exports fell by 6% and the number of people employed in manufacturing fell by 27,000, a decrease of 9%. This budget does not deal with what a budget should deal with. It is a scattergun, "Yes Minister" budget. The Civil Service and public service are there to implement Government policy. This is a shambolic attempt at a budget; the Government should withdraw it and introduce a proper budget.

I wish to deal specifically with investment in education and training. There is nothing in the budget that deals with this issue in a practical manner. Some 250,000 people are on the live register this evening, of whom 70% are males and there is an 82% increase in the number of males under the age of 25. We proposed in our pre-budget document Recovery through Reform an allocation of €25 million to deal with retaining in the construction sector and proposed that €70 million be allocated to the back to education allowance initiative whereby people would not have to be in receipt of the jobseeker's allowance for more than a year. They could go back to education and deal with the situation we have been dealt.

I wish to deal with my area of Limerick. Some 9,000 people were on the live register up to the end of September. We will not get the regional figures for the number unemployed until Friday. I do not know why it has changed. Previously we got them on the same day as the overall figures but now we need to wait another two days. I spoke about this matter in the House last night, as the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher, is aware. There is a 50% increase with an additional 3,000 people joining the live register in the past year. I asked for a task force to be set up to deal with the employment and retraining of people in Limerick. Some 450 people have been let go from Dell in the past week, with a further 100 people let go from Flextronics and 65 from Banta. I hope the Minister of State will take that on board.

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