Tom Barry (Cork East, Fine Gael)

Regarding atypical hours, countries like Spain virtually shut down on Sunday whereas we have become used to our country working throughout Sunday. People should only work all day on Sunday if something critical needs to get done that day. One cannot demand money from a business if doing so will cause that business to fail in the long term. As many Deputies will realise, the countryside has seen the systematic destruction of its shops and villages. It has no more shops. We need to determine what we can do about this issue.

Optimising job creation is a skill and must be the priority. We must use our heads in reforming the JLCs, which will play a fundamental role in where we go from this point. We cannot buy job creation with money. The farming industry is a good example of a cyclical system - some years one is down, some years one is up. We need to examine JLCs in the long term and determine how to work through the economic crisis together.

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