Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

The best way to project the future is to look at what happened in similar circumstances in the past. It was export-led growth that brought us a great recovery in the 1990s. Between 1994 and 2000, nearly 700,000 extra jobs were created. However, the jobs lagged behind the growth. I am not sure if the Deputy's statistics are correct, but I accept what he says about different components of the multinational industry base in the country. Overall, there are over 200,000 people working in these industries and they generate double that number in employment in the ancillary industries that supply them and support them. That is out of a total number of 1.8 million still at work in this country. I remember that at the height of the crisis in the late 1980s, employment in the country was down to about 940,000. Today it is still at 1.8 million. There are many people still going to work every morning.

The level of employment is not acceptable and we must do everything in our power to address the unemployment problem and get people back to work. However, we are not as badly positioned as the gloom and doom merchants would have us believe, and we can work our way and grow our way out of this.

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