Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

We have 448,600 people out of work and the Tánaiste states unemployment is the Government's top priority as a policy issue. Heaven help us if this is the Government working to put jobs first. Figures published yesterday show an unemployment rate of 14.5% and a shocking increase in poverty levels. Some 22.5% of people reported that they live in deprivation, which means being unable to afford a warm coat, struggling to heat one's home and so forth. This reality seems to be lost on the Tánaiste's colleague, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Leo Varadkar, who I do not see in the Chamber. Perhaps he is on a weekend break. In a very brash and unacceptable manner the Minister told the population at large to cheer up and take a vacation, although he may be really telling them to take a hike. Do his comments reflect a disposition among Government members that everything is okay?

Will the Tánaiste tell the almost half a million people who are out of work that he is genuinely different? I hear the same rhetoric we heard previously, and not only from this Government, about lending to small and medium sized businesses increasing. The Tánaiste indicated that employment is the Government's priority, whereas the evidence shows that the misery continues and most of those who are out of work do not see prospects of securing a job. They see the Tánaiste's Administration as a carbon copy of the previous Government.

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