Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)

Much has been made of this jobs initiative, which is probably the fourth announcement that has been made in the year since the Government came to power. The spin in the plan is remarkable, with much of it being stuff one would imagine the IDA, Enterprise Ireland, the county enterprise boards, local authorities and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation should already be doing. Why must we dress it all up again in a glossy plan so the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation can have a grand launch? I was amazed how much of it is actually what those people should be doing anyway. Why do we have the IDA if all this has to be put in place? I hope it has already been doing all these things. This was an occasion for spin, dressing up the plan and saying it would provide 100,000 jobs to get good PR for the Government for a week.

I was amazed when reading the plan to see one of its actions is the development of a simple, one page guide for small business entitled "Managing out of the Crisis". I urge the Taoiseach to send that to Brussels as soon as it is ready because it will be a magic panacea for everyone to get a one page guide on how to get out of the crisis. It is beyond belief it would be considered for inclusion as an action, that we would condense this all to one leaflet and hand it around small businesses in the hope it will keep them going. In one town in Donegal, five small businesses have closed since Christmas, with 20 to 30 part-time jobs lost and owner occupiers out of business. It is a pity we could not give them this leaflet before they got into bother otherwise they would have been able to keep going. It beggars belief.

In the section on the agrifood industry, there is only one mention of aquaculture, to develop offshore fin fish farms. There will be two or three offshore fin fish farms and that is the height of the Government's expectations for aquaculture between now and 2020. We can take it the Government has written off all the aquaculture businesses on the coast already. In Donegal there are at least three companies that are ready, willing and able to create jobs if only the Government could get its act together and sort out licensing arrangements. It would be much better to spend time sorting that out in vital areas, where the potential exists for 1,500 to 2,000 jobs but there is no mention of it at all.

The plan then refers to the creation of 150 jobs in fish processing between now and 2020. How do we even know this? When I contacted BIM about the Killybegs report on job creation to ask where these jobs in fish processing were, I was told it was a secret. How will the jobs be verifiable? We will never know if they are there and that seems to be the whole point.

There were three mentions of ICT and broadband in the 270 actions, with mention of 100 bits per minute broadband for schools and a lot of waffle about a next generation broadband taskforce and agreeing targets. We have come up with another fudge where some places will have access to fibre power broadband while others must depend on mobile or satellite broadband. Donegal no doubt will have to depend on satellite and mobile because it looks like the Government has no intention of rolling out a proper broadband infrastructure. That, however, could create jobs and foster local enterprise by providing fibre power access for businesses and people across the State. To provide the fibre optic network to every town in the country of more than 1,500 would cost just one year's promissory notes' payments for Anglo Irish Bank, payments we must make for the next 20 years. Imagine what we could do if we had control of that money for the next 20 years.

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