Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Our great country and its people have been brought to the brink of ruin by successive incompetent Fianna Fáil Governments. In the short time available to me, I want to focus on the issue of youth unemployment in particular and unemployment in the mid-west region. In the past three years, there has been a threefold increase in the national unemployment figure and it is currently at a rate of 13.7%. A total of 460,000 people are unemployed. Those figures show that 85% of the job losses have been suffered by young people under the age of 34 years. A total of 96,000 people under the age of 25 are on the dole. A total of 200,000 people will be forced to emigrate in the next two years. This is a grim statistic and it is a grim prospect for families who are struggling, for young people who are looking for a bit of hope, for something to help them stay in this country. If we want to fix this broken country and if we want to fix the economy, we need to fix the jobs crisis. We need a radical job creation strategy, a plan that everyone can support and everybody will know what it will do for them and their families. We need to offer hope to everyone.

The Fine Gael Party focused on youth unemployment in our document, Hope for a Lost Generation, produced by Deputy Leo Varadkar. It is a simple plan which will take 38,000 young people off the dole queues by means of a very modest injection, a net cost of €254 million to the Exchequer. It is about creating job opportunities and educational opportunities for our young people. I ask the Government why it will not adopt such a strategy. It is available on the Fine Gael website. I challenge the Government to implement it.

Unemployment in the mid-west is above the national average. The mid-west task force was set up by the Tánaiste and then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Mary Coughlan, in the wake of the 2,000 job losses in Dell. People across the political divide in the mid-west welcomed the publication of the report on 28 July 2009, but more than a year later virtually nothing has happened. The chairman, Mr. Denis Brosnan, complained on the national airwaves that nothing was happening. He called together all the local politicians in the mid-west region and he highlighted three specific projects, the Lynxs cargo facility in Shannon Airport, the upgrading of infrastructure at Plassey technological park and progress on the Limerick regeneration project. He was appointed by the Government as the chairman of a jobs task force, yet he is being ignored by the Government. This is not good enough. We need to get real about dealing with unemployment. If we do not deal with this crisis, we will not fix our economic crisis.

Budget 2011 should be about fixing this country and creating jobs and not just about cuts and increased taxation.

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