Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

The budget did not contain even one significant initiative to deal with unemployment. The only initiative taken on the issue of unemployment in the budget was to make it more difficult to qualify for jobseeker's benefit and restrict the period over which it is paid.

I have asked about county enterprise boards previously. Will the Minister agree to strengthen the role of the county enterprise boards by removing the limitation on the type of enterprise the boards can support and by raising the limit on the number of jobs an enterprise can create, which is currently set at ten? We must move from negativity to positivity. If an enterprise wants to create 11 jobs, it cannot do so and such enterprises fall between the cracks between the enterprise boards and Enterprise Ireland and the IDA. It is local jobs that will rescue us from the dire situation we are all in.

The Fianna Fáil Party has great connections with the building industry, but let me put a suggestion to it. The Labour Party has suggested that a major school building programme to move the 40,000 children from prefabs into proper classrooms and a national insulation scheme to make our houses more energy efficient and reduce carbon emissions and household energy costs be initiated. Does the Minister of State not agree this would create jobs? The job creation scheme in place is going nowhere.

Most people would agree that the poor person's bank is the credit union and like myself, most people started off in life by borrowing €3,000 or €4,000 there. When Deputy Pat Rabbitte was Minister, he widened the scope for lending by the credit unions, through the Credit Union Act, so they can now lend significant sums. The other day we heard of a lady who could not get an additional overdraft of €5,000 to help her protect jobs. Thankfully, credit unions can now lend sums of €50,000 or €60,000.

Will the Minister ensure the Financial Regulator, who operates under the aegis of the Central Bank, does not restrict the ability of the credit unions to lend such sums? Credit unions are liquid and are not in the same mess as the banks, because they maintained a rigid discipline. Most credit unions with savings such as €150 million would only lend €80 million of that. They can also pay 3% or 4% of a dividend. These are the poor person's bank.

Can we encourage credit unions to become part of the process of promoting jobs and get them to lend money for this? Should we not bring in the directors of the credit unions and other financial institutions and tell them this is a critical time for our economy and we need all hands on deck to ensure small enterprises are given the life blood they need — the oxygen of credit to maintain and create jobs? The issue for many small and medium enterprises is not profitability, but the availability of credit.

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