Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

During my contribution yesterday I noted that Ireland was losing one job every ten minutes. I now need to correct that statement because given today's figures, Ireland is losing a job every three minutes and I include in that Saturdays, Sundays, the evening time and holidays. That is an extraordinary statistic. During the time this debate has taken, 65 people have been made unemployed. Today the seasonally adjusted figure for the live register is 260,000, which is much worse than I thought it would be and I am accused of being a prophet of doom. At 6.7% we are getting very close to the EU average and I believe it is now a certainty that by Christmas we will overtake the EU average in terms of unemployment. Already 16 out of the 27 EU countries have lower unemployment than we do. It is certain that we will be ahead of the EU average quite soon. I believe it is a certainty that we will overtake France, Italy and Germany in the next six months. Those are countries we once considered to be high-unemployment countries.

While international factors certainly affect this downturn, all those countries are also on planet earth and are affected by the same international criteria. In the United States unemployment is at a five-year high, but in Ireland it is at a ten-year high. In Germany unemployment is at a 16-year low, but in Ireland it is at a ten-year high. There can be no question about the depths to which we have sunk compared with other countries, big and small, open and closed economies alike.

I see a certain parallel in the Government's attitude to the recession, which initially was described by the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Martin, as a welcome correction. It then became a downturn and eventually a slowdown. After many months of denial the ERSI pretty much forced the Government to abandon its denial and accept there is a recession. Then of course we had panic. The same has occurred with the public finances. We were told that it was not that bad, the fundamentals of the economy were sound, we had a very low national debt and, as we were not borrowing that much it was acceptable to borrow money for capital resources, etc. Then suddenly the Government had to accept the real problem and now, according to the Taoiseach, it is the worst situation for 100 years, which again is panic. That is a total exaggeration. It is not the worst situation for 100 years. It is probably the worst situation for 25 years but not 100 years.

I see the same kind of attitude of denial from Government. While unemployment is increasing in all sectors the Government claims it is not that bad and that it was much higher 11 or 12 years ago when the country was a very different place. I expect that unemployment levels will hit 300,000 by approximately February or March and perhaps 350,000 by the end of next year. Then, of course, a year too late, there will be panic and the Government will propose solutions that will not work at that stage. That has been its approach to economic and social policy for many years.

The Government has made a bad situation worse. The national wage agreement cannot now be afforded and I do not believe it will be paid. Again there will be a panicked response in a few months' time when the Government will suddenly announce it will not pay it after all, having pretended it would pay it for several months. That will have a knock-on effect on the cost of labour in the private sector which will also be asked to meet these increases even though it cannot do so.

The Government has mistakenly decided to cut back the apprenticeship system even though this is one thing FÁS does well. There is a failure to reform FÁS. I accept that FÁS does some good work. Any organisation that spends €1 billion must do some good work. I make no criticism of people who participate in FÁS schemes. However, I criticise the way that FÁS is managed. I am not ashamed to make that criticism despite the fact that some of the Members opposite seem to go out of their way to defend FÁS and the vested interests that protect it. This is an organisation that is subject to a Committee of Public Accounts inquiry, a Comptroller and Auditor General inquiry and a Garda fraud investigation. We should not be ashamed, afraid or embarrassed to say there is something seriously wrong with that organisation.

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