Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

Investment by the National Pensions Reserve Fund must be made in a certain way and EUROSTAT will dictate that. The Minister says we are moving in the right direction but young people are moving to Dublin airport and from there to Australia and it is not a lifestyle choice. The set of figures the Minister claims are the best yet represent 439,000 people unemployed. It is not acceptable.

When I met the troika as part of the Sinn Féin delegation, it informed me that at no point during its discussions did any Minister or Irish Government delegation discuss the use of the National Pensions Reserve Fund to invest in job creation, save for water metering purposes. It was never on the agenda of the troika. The Minister has failed to do this. Nevertheless, the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach stand up in the House and declare that job creation is their No. 1 priority but never has the issue been raised with the troika except for water metering. In the Minister's view, how much of the National Pensions Reserve Fund, the €5.4 billion remaining in the discretionary portfolio, will be used for the purposes of job creation?

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