Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)

The Government's priority is not job creation. There were €20 million worth of new job creation ideas in the last budget but 150 times that amount is going into bailing out the banks. The Government's priority is the inverse of what the Minister says. Its priority is the opposite of job creation. The Government is prioritising the bailing out of banks.

There is an avalanche of businesses within the system that are at the edge of viability. Many of these will be forced to close over the next number of months and years. The corporate and sovereignty figures show that 1,683 businesses closed last year, up 16% from 2009, with construction, retail and hospitality bearing the brunt of this. In my home town, Spicers Bakery was on the go for 180 years. It has had to let go 27 employees, with the remaining 20 employees hanging by a thread. When I called the Minister's office and asked that he engage with Spicers Bakery, I was told by an official that the bakery was not a client company of Enterprise Ireland or the IDA and that there was no mechanism to engage with the business, even though it is a manufacturing business.

Given that so many jobs are hanging by a thread and that enterprise agencies engage with small new start-ups, why is there not an agency within the Department that would engage with all types of businesses before they come to the final stage of not being viable and being forced to lay off staff?

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