Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

As they leave the Chamber, I earnestly congratulate Deputies Killeen and Pat Carey on their promotions to full ministerial office. I also congratulate those who have been brought onto the junior benches. However, I do not doubt that the real news today is that not one previous office holder has been removed from office. It is a clear indication that if it had not been for the situations applying in the cases of the former Ministers, Deputies O'Dea and Cullen, we would not be looking at any new Ministers today. We will be asked to vote for a sham, in effect, when the Taoiseach asks us to endorse this partially reshuffled Cabinet. There should be no mistake about our answer - we will not endorse this charade of a Government. Rather than engaging in this partial reshuffle, the members of the Government should be shuffling out of office with their heads held down in shame. The Taoiseach's focus is on retaining jobs for the boys and girls in Fianna Fáil, and the boys and girl in the Green Party.

Over 432,000 unemployed citizens of this State are watching this game of musical chairs. Further thousands of people are looking on from overseas, having been forced to emigrate by this Government's policies. One in four young people in Ireland is unemployed. Unemployment among young people in the Twenty-Six Counties increased by 150% in 2009, to 85,000 at the start of 2010. Nationally, the toll continues to rise towards 500,000. If the figures for those who have emigrated as a result of the recession were taken into account, the figure of 500,000 would be exceeded. What have unemployed young people got in response to their plight from a Government that seeks our endorsement for these measures? Without putting a tooth in it, they have got a two-fingered gesture from Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. That is the salute they got from the coalition Government when it cut dole payments for the young in budget 2010. The Taoiseach should ask young people whether they care about whose faces sit around the Cabinet table, about who was elevated or about who was disappointed because they were not shuffled upwards.

I would have no hesitation in welcoming this Cabinet reshuffle if it were accompanied by fundamental changes in Government policies, but there is no such change. Having listened to and reread the Taoiseach's contribution to this afternoon's debate, it is clear that there is no such change. The reshuffled Fianna Fáil-Green Party Cabinet is on the same course to disaster that it has steered since it came together in June 2007.

It is clear that there will be no change in health policy. The Minister, Deputy Harney, is prolonging her tenure as Minister for Health and Children, in which she has made an inequitable health service even more inequitable, for example by promoting for-profit privatisation and ruthless centralisation. We know too well the results of the disastrous health policies that have been pursued by Fianna Fáil-led Governments since 1997. As I said during the debate on the matter in this House before the St. Patrick's Day recess, the debacle in Tallaght hospital was not simply the result of a glitch in a single hospital. It was a clear example, albeit apparently an extreme one, of the systemic failures that are evident in our health service each day. At the root of such failures is the two-tier, public-private, apartheid nature of the health system. That inequity breeds inefficiency and leads to waste, which is compounded by under-resourcing. In addition, the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government imposed cuts in the 2009 and 2010 budgets that affect public patients worst of all.

The Tallaght hospital debacle perfectly illustrates the Pontius Pilate attitude of this Government. The Minister for Health and Children was told about the unread X-rays last December but apparently did not trouble herself to ask how many X-rays were involved, or to keep on top of the situation to ensure it was being addressed. This is her first appearance in the House since this crisis exploded in our faces and visited such worry on thousands of families across the country. An inquiry has been established only because a whistle-blower went to the media and exposed the whole affair to public view. If that had not happened, how long would it have taken the affected patients to be informed? They would not have wanted to have depended on the Minister to advise them. Why did the Minister not make the situation public in the first instance, to ensure openness, transparency and accountability? That is the question the Minister, Deputy Harney, must answer.

This reshuffle signals no change in the policy of imposing savage cuts on public services. This policy is futile in its claimed intent to aid economic recovery and punitive in its effects on the people. Before I give an example in the education sector, where the Tánaiste has a new role, I would like to express my disagreement with the remark made earlier to the effect that education is a lesser portfolio. Responsibility for education is a hugely important matter. I wish to refer to a letter I received last week from a school in my constituency where a special class has been suppressed, two teaching posts have been cut and children with a multiplicity of special needs have been put back into the mainstream classes from which they were removed on foot of an assessment by a psychologist from the Department of Education and Science.

This reshuffle will preserve the fundamentally flawed economic approach of the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government. Its slash and burn policy will not lead to recovery but to deeper recession. Just as this policy penalises citizens today, NAMA will penalise them in the future. The golden circle of politicians, bankers, property speculators and the corporate elite, who profited most from the Celtic tiger and caused the recession, are protecting themselves at a cost of billions of euro to future generations of Irish people.

The cuts in public services and public service pay made by Fianna Fáil and Green Party have led to chaos in public administration in this State. This is the result of the Government's slash and burn strategy and its deliberate scuppering of the negotiations with the public service unions last December. Regardless of what may be said about the tactics of some public service unions - the situation at the passport office is uppermost in people's minds today, as it should be – the truth is that those ultimately responsible are sitting on the Government benches, or at least some of them were earlier. Those who must assume some of that responsibility include certain Fianna Fáil backbenchers who staged what can only be described as a sham revolt last December as part of the strategy that led to the collapse of those talks. Where was the backbench revolt when the Government made across the board cuts to social welfare payments? Where were the resignations from the Green Party then? In contrast, Sinn Féin has highlighted the heartlessness of a Government that took €8.50 a week out of the pockets of people who care for elderly and disabled relatives in their homes. We have opposed the plans of a Government that wants to damage our health services fatally by taking a further 1,100 acute hospital beds out of the system in 2010. We have stood against a Government that trumpets its commitment to education but condemns children to learn in prefabricated accommodations and takes support away from those with special needs. This Government has left behind it a trail of destruction of Irish jobs, including those in flagship Irish industry. It has allowed valuable employment to die and skills to be squandered in SR Technics, Aer Lingus, Waterford Glass, the sugar industry and myriad small and medium-sized enterprises the length and breadth of the country. As I have said on several occasions in this Chamber, the lights are going out for the last time almost every evening on once thriving businesses. For Sale and To Let signs on retail and services businesses throughout the State are only accruing dust because there is no access to credit for people with a little gumption, thought and interest to take up the challenge of moving into business. The NAMA intervention has had no impact in this regard. The Government has no strategy to keep young people in Ireland and to use their skills to rebuild the economy. It hopes emigration will hide the true extent of unemployment. The Government's decision to cut youth dole payments was made in order to encourage young people to leave.

I could use all my time condemning the policies of this so-called reshuffled Cabinet, and they richly deserve such condemnation. However, it is just as important to say that there are real alternatives and another way forward. There are many measures the Government could implement to tackle youth unemployment. Given that the Taoiseach spoke in his contribution about tackling the terrible scourge that is encroaching on the lives of families the length and breadth of the State, I propose to outline some of the measures my party has proposed in the hope that those now given responsibility will listen, learn and implement. Sinn Féin presented its solutions last week and we are determined to campaign for their implementation. The young unemployed must be given the opportunity to work and to use their skills and education. Investing in tackling youth unemployment now will pay dividends well into the future. Sinn Féin advocates taking revenue from the National Pensions Reserve Fund on a once-off basis and implementing the revenue-raising proposals set out in our budget 2010 pre-budget submission in order to fund our job creation proposals.

Our proposals include a youth jobs fund to create 20,000 new jobs at a cost of €500 million; an individual plan for the long-term prospects of every person under 25 years who is on the live register; 2,000 places on a "one more language" scheme to give the young unemployed a chance to learn an extra foreign language, at a cost of €20million; 5,000 free ECDL advanced places at a cost of €25 million; 10,000 new community employment places at a cost of €168 million; 1,000 places on conversion courses at third level to help graduates convert their skills to potential growth sectors, at a cost of €15 million; eight measures to treble the number of under 25s who are self-employed, including a national entrepreneurship programme, access to credit and greater support for high-potential start-ups; the creation of a publicly owned green technology firm and a major drive to attract foreign direct investment in renewable energy, at a cost of €100 million; making Ireland a digital media leader through support for skills, infrastructure and entrepreneurship; a national development scheme to employ people directly on public works projects employing 2,000 workers at a cost of approximately €100 million; and a lifting of the suspension on the early farm retirement scheme in order to make farming an option for younger people.

It is possible to beat youth unemployment with imaginative thinking and a political commitment. However, that has been completely absent from the Government's approach to the jobs crisis. We are most assuredly not going to get such an approach from what we have heard and witnessed today in terms of this so-called reshuffle. At the end of the day, it is nothing more than the same clapped-out Administration. This sham reshuffle comes at a time when there is intense debate on the future of Ireland, with much of that debate being partitionist in nature. Commentators speak of "renewing the republic" or "re-imagining Ireland" but it is an Ireland, in their minds, that stops at Dundalk or Monaghan or Letterkenny and a republic that encompasses only 26 counties. Republicans have a vital and unique contribution to make to the debate by pointing out that for real transformation in Irish politics, the economy and society, national reunification is essential. We reimagine Ireland as it ought to be, an island republic with a place for all who live here, a democracy based on human rights and citizenship, an economy based on shared wealth. For that vision to become a reality, we need a complete political clear-out in this State. Neither of the two conservative parties - Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - can provide the new politics that we need. This rehashed Cabinet certainly cannot provide it. The first step can be taken quickly, which is to allow the people to make a decision on who should occupy these posts of responsibility.

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