Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)

I have not seen before or during this debate, or in Government thinking since it came to office, any radical change in its attitude towards job creation. Nobody on the Government side appears to think in any way outside the box. They seem to think with exactly the same paralysis as the previous Government on this issue. I acknowledge the internship programme and it is not fair necessarily to criticise it at this stage. However, we are speaking about a very small number of jobs for the 14.2% of people who are out of work. Why does the Government not embark on something radical?

I am sure I do not have the support of all of my Technical Group colleagues on this suggestion, but why does the Government not focus on two or three areas in which it could do something? I will suggest two. Where are the areas in which growth has and could occur? It is very simple: the first is multinationals and the second is entrepreneurships and small businesses. What has the Government done about these? Last week, Twitter came and this is a great achievement. Of course there was a great parade and trumpeting and the Government claimed credit for it. I suspect it has to do with the IDA and has been in the offing since long before the Government came to power. This is an area in which all Governments of the State have been immensely successful.

It is not very popular to speak about multinationals as a successful growth area because it implies we are not doing it on our own. However, we are because successive Governments have been united in seeing the advent and arrival of multinationals as a job creation mechanism, with more than 100,000 jobs from US multinationals alone. This is a tremendous achievement. It is the policy of matching education with the multinational capital foreign direct investment which comes here.

Why not state this is working and reduce the tax? It is because the Government cannot think outside the box and does not dare to do so because it is scared of Sarkozy and Merkel and the rest of them. Why does the Government not go over there and state we will reduce it? We do not owe anything to Europe except the few bob; we owe it no goodwill whatsoever. What would be the result of this? There would be a loss in tax revenue but an enormous growth in jobs, and this is what we want. The spin-off effect and the spending effect would boost the economy. Europe would not like it, and we are frightened of going to Europe and stating it is what we will do. Try it. What is wrong with it? The Government is scared of doing anything dramatic. The Government is still in the same mindset.

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