Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

Over the past several weeks, politics has been dominated by personalities due to the resignations of George Lee and Déirdre de Búrca from the Oireachtas and Deputies Willie O'Dea and Trevor Sargent from ministerial office. Politics is not about personalities but about the State's 4.5 million citizens and, particularly, the 437,000 on the live register. This motion's focus is on the 85,910 people under the age of 25 on the live register. Not only are one third of all young men signing on but 40% of all young people under the age of 25 are dependent on social welfare through either jobseeker's allowance, jobseeker's benefit, one-parent family payment or invalidity benefit. This is a real indictment of the country. This is what must be discussed in Parliament.

Reading this morning's newspapers, I was disappointed there was not a single line on last night's one and a half hour debate on jobs. Then on the radio I had to listen to David Davin-Power, Aine Lawlor and Dr. Elaine Byrne criticising politicians for only being interested in political soap opera and personalities. Every Member knows that yesterday's ministerial resignation by Deputy Sargent took ten minutes of Dáil time yet we spent three hours debating the jobs crisis over the past two days, along with attending many committee meetings.

I object to and resent people who spend their time in lecture halls and libraries in Trinity College, Dublin and studios in Donnybrook telling us we are overpaid and out of touch with people. Could there be any people more out of touch with reality than the Irish media when they think it is appropriate to spend three weeks talking about which individual politician did or did not resign, why they did and who pushed them? What a load of rubbish. What we should be doing is talking about the issues which at least Members in the Chamber tonight did.

This motion has put forward eight ideas for job creation. It is positive in that it does not target the Government or is personal against the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment or the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. It puts forward the Fine Gael idea that jobs should be at the centre of all economic policies, that there should be a national internship programme, which unfortunately, the Government will not accept. Neither will the Government accept the proposal for a second-chance education for 10,000 construction workers who left school early without academic qualifications. Nor will it accept the apprentice guarantee, modelled on the community youth training programme that FÁS had some years ago to take on apprentices who cannot finish their training to build community centres and public buildings. Nor will it accept the expansion of community employment schemes from 5,000. It used to be 44,000 and could easily be increased to 29,000.

The motion proposed a work share programme based on the German Kurzarbeitergeld scheme and the Dutch and Rhode Island short-time working subsidies. This would allow an employer with 100 employees who must lay off ten workers to put 20 on short time while the Government would subsidise the difference in salaries and get them training when not working. The German scheme has sustained 500,000 jobs so far but the Government will not support this proposal. Fine Gael proposed a jobs tax cut using the carbon tax not as a revenue grab but a chance to reduce employers' PRSI contributions. Again, the Government will not support this.

I look forward to a debate on our NewERA policy. The proposal for the holding company, which would not be a quango, is to find a mechanism to get capital back into Ireland.

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