Tom Barry (Cork East, Fine Gael)

This Bill restores the minimum wage to €8.65 an hour. In my view, as an employer, this should not be regarded as a level that can be worked down towards but rather as a minimum that can be worked up from. Businesses are based on having people working with them and not against them. It is important to make going to work an attractive option and this is the aim of the jobs initiative. The payment of €8.65 per hour is equivalent to €346 a week or approximately €18,000 a year. This is very small money and it is hardly enough for a family to survive on but families do and in many cases there is little or no money left for mortgage loans which were taken out in the so-called Celtic tiger years.

I recently had a meeting with the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, to discuss a possible practical solution to the mortgage problem and I hope that some or all of my suggestions may be of use. People are leaving this country and they will not be back again, contrary to some views, if the huge debt hanging over their heads is not addressed. The worry of the debt is sending them out of the country and unless this is dealt with, they will not be back. Why should they come back? The pension age is being moved upwards and while we would all aspire to early retirement and living longer, this upward move cannot be avoided. If good government is in place over the next decade, the situation with regard to pensions might be completely different. Ten years is a long time; it took ten years for the previous Government to destroy this country so it is hoped that in the next ten years we might reverse that situation.

In farming, which is a cyclical industry, many people never saw the price downturn that happened in 2009 and very few saw the surge which happened last year. Thankfully, that is one of the positive aspects that is pushing our exports up in this country. I would like to remind those speakers from the previous Government that one in ten of the jobs they aspire to have created in the past few years was created in the public sector, hence we have a bloated public sector which has no productive work to do.

The national internship scheme is a fabulous idea and will get skilled people back to work, but will also get them back into employment that matches their skills with a particular job that they are good at. It is knowledge-based in that respect. People will receive an extra €50 in their social welfare payments which is not a huge amount of money but the scheme will get them into the workforce.

Once a person enters the workforce, if he or she can add to the productivity of a business - I see it myself - one tends to hold on to him or her because he or she has proved his or her worth. It is a great initiative. It is simple but most good ideas are simple. Halving the lower rate of employers' PRSI provides a chance for employers like myself to make sure that we can employ extra people. Not only does it help employers, but people who are looking for a job.

Social welfare fraud is another issue which needs to be and is being tackled. I am glad the Minister stated that social welfare is being targeted at those who are most in need. That should be the case. We need to get rid of the jet set community who arrive in, sign on and collect payments because the more we tackle fraud, the more money will be available for genuine recipients.

People complain about JLCs. They are agreements that were written for a different country at a different time. They are not relevant today and need to be addressed. There is no point in political point scoring or saying that people are not living up to their expectations. I welcome the Bill.

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