Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)

The Government has told the banks to deleverage €70 billion and it has told them to give €6 billion to small businesses. The two objectives are mutually exclusive and cannot be achieved at the same time. With regard to the national internship programme and unemployment, we have almost 500,000 people on social welfare, but only 5,000 positions are being provided on the national internship programme. If the problem is as big as Kildare Street, the solution is the same size as this glass. The mismatch between the scale of the problem and the solutions attempted by the Government are incomprehensible. There is no match between the problem and the solution when there are only 5,000 internship places for 500,000 unemployed.

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