Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this extremely important issue. Unfortunately, it took the Government so long to make up its mind that much of our credibility and money has been lost in recent months. The proposals themselves raise major questions about the thought process of those involved. Those on quite low incomes have been asked to pay a pension levy that will never be of benefit to them. This will clearly put further pressure on the low and middle-income earners who are already classified by CORI, whose representatives appeared before the Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs today, and other organisations as the new poor because of their high mortgage costs, etc.

This package, introduced in the first days of February when we have now learnt that 36,500 more people joined dole queues in January, gives no support or impetus towards job creation. According to the Taoiseach's figures the additional 36,500 will cost the Exchequer more than €700 million in social welfare payments and revenue lost through PAYE and PRSI in a single year. In turn, this represents more than half of the payments the Taoiseach is taking from the public service in pension charges. This is why it is essential for the Government to make proposals to give constructive support for industry and employment in general such as those made by my party leader, Deputy Kenny, during Leaders' Questions this morning.

This week I visited a shop in Monaghan. While it looked the same as the last time I had been there, when I talked to the staff I discovered that one was on a two-day week and the other on a three-day week. They are all sharing time to try to keep their jobs. This is an indication of the problems in the retail and manufacturing sector throughout the country. The Government can no longer ignore the haemorrhage of business to Northern Ireland caused in the main by the VAT difference but also because of our lack of competitiveness through higher costs. In recent years I along with others have been highlighting the serious problem of our ESB and general energy charges. Unbelievably the Government supported the energy regulator every time fuel prices increased owing to so-called "external factors". However, when oil prices collapsed there was no rush to bring down prices.

On Friday I travelled from Cavan town to Limerick. On that journey I passed a number of petrol stations. The prices ranged from 89 cent per litre to 99.9 cent, which is a differential of 45 cent per gallon. There is no effort to control these costs. We are uncompetitive and this proposal makes no attempt to address that.

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