Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

Some 760 jobs are to go in the Bank of Scotland (Ireland), while yesterday it was announced that 175 jobs are to go at Boston Scientific in Galway. That is almost 1,000 jobs in two days, on top of the 436,000 people who are already out of work as we saw from last week's live register figures. The biggest and most urgent issue currently facing this country is to get the economy repaired and recovered, and to get people back to work. I was interested to hear the comments made last night by Mr. Craig Barrett, the businessman credited with bringing Intel to Ireland. According to one report, he deconstructed the notion that Ireland could recreate its Celtic tiger economy simply by cutting costs. He advocated a prescription in three parts: smart people, smart ideas and the right environment.

We have been hearing a lot from the Government about the smart economy. In December 2008, the Taoiseach announced an innovation task force, but did not set it up until June 2009. It was supposed to report by the end of 2009, but it has not done so and we do not know when it will report. Last year, the Taoiseach promoted another good idea, which was to establish an international content services centre. The Labour Party agrees with that idea and in pursuit of it Deputy Quinn tabled a question to the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, since seemingly her Department is responsible for initiatives to promote job creation. We were a bit surprised to receive a query on foot of the parliamentary question asking us to explain what we meant by an international content services centre. Can the Taoiseach say what progress has been made towards establishing such a centre? When and where will it be established? What budgetary investment will be provided for it by the Government and what is the estimated number of jobs it will create?

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