Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I agree with the Government and the earlier comments made by the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, in dismissing with contempt the criticism and prescriptions of the Fianna Fáil Party when it comes to the Government's jobs initiative. The unemployment crisis arises directly from Fianna Fáil's collusion with bankers and developers whose greed stoked up the property bubble that has caused the economy to crash and led to mass unemployment. It arises from Fianna Fáil's decision to collude with the European Union to protect the bankers and bondholders and transfer their gambling debts onto the backs of Irish workers in the form of brutal, unjust and economically crippling austerity measures. The deficit problem we face which is essentially denuding us of the revenues necessary to fund a real fiscal stimulus programme arises from Fianna Fáil's squandering of successive massive budget surpluses in the form of tax breaks for the super wealthy which have narrowed the tax base to unsustainable levels. However, if it was the cabal of Fianna Fáil, the bankers, the developers and, more recently, the EU authorities which created the economic crisis which has led to massive unemployment which is blighting the lives of 450,000 people and their families, the Government comprising Fine Gael and Labour Party has a responsibility to clear up the mess. That is why it was elected with the slogan "Let's get Ireland working". A centrepiece of the pre-election sloganeering was talk of the jobs budget. At the time it was said this measure would inject massive stimulus and produce in the region of 100,000 jobs. In that context it is very important to say that when we talk about jobs we must mean net jobs. It is no good claiming these initiatives will create so many thousands of jobs if, at the same time, the Government's other actions lead directly to tens of thousands of job losses elsewhere. There are 2,000 jobs to go in AIB, for example, with many further thousands likely to go as a result of the Government's bank restructuring problems. Net job losses number tens of thousands as a result of the public sector recruitment embargo. Other tens of thousands are being lost yearly as a result of small business closures due to the impact on people's spending power of measures such as the universal social charge and other income cuts or the job losses that will certainly follow if the Government insists on going through with the sale of vital State assets and companies.

It is in the context of the massive haemorrhaging of jobs, as a result of depressed demand, the public sector recruitment embargo and a devastating hangover from the collapse of the construction sector, that we must judge this jobs budget, which was, first, an initiative, then a fiscally neutral initiative and latterly a modest proposal. In this context the modest proposal is a spectacular non-event, a damp squib to beat all damp squibs.

Reductions in employers' PRSI for employees earning up to some €356 per week and the plan to review the JLCs and REAs effectively mean incentivising low pay in the economy which will further depress demand and attack the wages and conditions of workers.

The stimulus elements of this initiative, by my calculation, will produce perhaps some thousand jobs directly. The focus on tourism, while it may be welcome and may produce some stimulus in that area, frankly worries me. When one looks at other countries where the IMF has come in and devastated the indigenous manufacturing and domestic economy all that is left is tourism. Essentially, poor countries are left begging for the tourist dollar while the rest of the economy goes down the toilet.

The jobs initiative simply does not address the root or scale of the problem and, in many cases, goes in the wrong direction. What is needed is serious direct investment in strategic industries, public works programmes that put people back to work and the development of vital infrastructure, services, schools, hospitals and all the rest of it. In this regard, this budget is a spectacular failure.

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