Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

With due respect to the Minister, whom I am glad to see here, the budget is bereft of vision, devoid of ideas and lacking in philosophy. I am always very fair and there are some very good ideas in the budget. However, I am concerned that the budget contained nothing to tackle the scourge of unemployment and losing jobs. There was not just a tacit acceptance, there was an explicit acceptance that by the end of this year 75,000 more people will be unemployed. At a net cost of €20,000 each it would total approximately €1.5 billion, a very significant amount. I need not spell out the impact of that as I know the Minister is acutely aware of it. There is nothing for jobs in the budget.

I am concerned that we have got into confrontational mode, sometimes inspired by a right-wing media agenda that it is best to confront unions and adopt a macho pose that shows the Government is stronger and will muscle people down. However, the very people the Government is tackling are the people who have the few bob that the Government is giving them on behalf of the State and they actually spend it. The circular theory of money and the velocity theory of money are nowhere more pronounced than among the very people who are in the low and middle-income groups. The propensity and ability to save among those people is minuscule. The propensity to save among people from the high middle-income groups and upwards has increased from the normal 2.5% to 3% up to 10% or 11%. That is a also problem owing to lack of confidence. There is no confidence engendered in the budget to get those people releasing money and buying in the marketplace. Therefore we are perpetuating the problem rather than tackling and arresting it and introducing initiatives to try to get money flowing again.

It is about time the Government took the opportunity to get the trade union movement back into constructive dialogue. The Minister for Finance, a person of great sense and tremendous intelligence - I do not say that in any condescending way - knows this better than I do and can expound about it better that I would ever do. The opportunities that existed in early December should be revisited. Let us try to get the trade union movement and the Government back on the pitch playing a positive and constructive role. We should never denigrate or forget the impact of the previous partnerships and understandings. They should not be written off because it suits a media agenda to write them off. We should always pay particular tribute because without their participation and positive impact we would not have seen the illusion of success that some people enjoyed. How short term it was. Nevertheless, they played a major role in addressing the significant financial and fiscal crisis that existed from the late 1980s onwards. We cannot forget about that.

Youth unemployment is an enormous problem. Over the last two and a half years, there has been a 150% increase and it is a social timebomb. It is impacting negatively on young people and is an enormous challenge. The last figure was 84,398 and there is very little concentration on jobs. This cohort of people believes the Government has thrown them to one side. The only thing they could extract from the budget was the fact that it was an attack upon them. There was a reduction in social welfare for most of them. Most of them do not even want to draw it at all. As regards the back to education and back to work allowances, all the time limits should be cut out. If the Labour Party was in Government or whoever, I would not vote for them, as a backbencher, unless they got rid of the stupid six-months and three-months limits. It is better to have people in the education system or to retain the back to work allowance or anything that gives soul and direction to people's lives.

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