Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)

Here we are, roughly eight months into the new Administration, and the situation is that 440,000 people are unemployed and 70,000 are emigrating annually. It is important that the lives of the individuals who are forced out of this country are understood, which was very well demonstrated in the RTE programme "Arrivals" last night. This situation is the result of the lack of focus on jobs. We discussed the crisis with regard to upward-only rents, energy costs, the credit freeze, the increases in VAT and, now, the Government's determination to lift the cap on hypermarkets, which are all anti-business policies.

One of the aspects I would like to have included in the jobs strategy is the breakdown of large State contracts. It is not true that the Government does not create jobs. The Government creates jobs, and there is close to a 1:3 multiplier effect for every euro invested in capital projects by the State. To give an example, a new contract is being developed for the maintenance and construction of the Bord Gáis grid throughout the State. It has come to my knowledge that instead of the normal procedure where the Government had contracts for a number of small businesses which worked on the grid, a new super-contract with one supplier is being created which will have a value of approximately €1 billion over almost ten years. It is likely this will push the contract outside of Ireland and make many small Irish suppliers in this area unemployed.

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