Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the chance to speak on the latest jobs plan from the Government. If we had not been here last April and December for the previous plans, we might have more respect for this one. I have a lot of respect for the Minister, Deputy Bruton, and his departmental team but I get the feeling that we have been here before. We had the jobs initiative in April 2011, which possibly had some good things in it. For example, the VAT rate for tourism was more than likely responsible for some job creation in the tourism sector. When one looks at the figures, however, there are more people unemployed now than at this time last year. We have had more announcements of plans than jobs being created since the Government took office.

As regards accountability, I welcome the fact that Ministers will answer to the House concerning their parts of the plan, but what happens if they do not deliver? It is unlikely that they will come in here and say "We couldn't do this". The Government has a huge majority so all we can do is give them a rap on the knuckles saying "Go and do your homework properly and come back again". Accountability means Ministers appearing before a committee, but I am concerned because so many Departments are involved. We need a central committee that would hold Departments to account. I am not talking about Ministers who are all genuinely committed, but the departmental machinery does not understand how serious this problem is. They need to be brought in before one central committee and held responsible for what their Departments are doing. If that were done, we might actually move towards delivering some of the targets in the Action Plan for Jobs.

Much of the focus has been on assimilating county enterprise boards into local authorities. Deputy Deasy is right to say that many local authorities do not get it. They feel that the business and enterprise sector pays rates, and should move away after that. In changing this area, however, we should not lose focus on county enterprise boards.

The Minister is right to say that, between small SME start-ups and multinationals, we have lost a middle cohort of people who want to create jobs. I have an enormous respect for Enterprise Ireland whose work in promoting Ireland abroad is fantastic. I have had the honour of accompanying a few foreign trade missions and I have seen the phenomenal work they do. Enterprise Ireland identifies high potential start-ups. For example, the Action Plan for Jobs focuses on targets for gaming. Two years ago, nobody knew what gaming was but because of Enterprise Ireland's work we can justifiably say that it will create jobs. Nonetheless Enterprise Ireland still does not understand the small and medium enterprise sector. Local SMEs find themselves caught in the middle - too big for the county enterprise boards, but too small for Enterprise Ireland.

The Leader partnership companies are missing from the jobs plan. In rural areas, these companies offer significant grant assistance. Also missing from the plan are towns designated as gateways and hubs in the national spatial strategy. Businesses within such towns are excluded from accessing funds under the Leader programme, even though such towns have high unemployment. That decision needs to be reviewed, particularly given our ongoing engagement with Europe. If Leader is about creating jobs, towns like Ballina and others are dependent on the rural economy and so a link can justifiably be made.

Deputy Lawlor and others spoke about the strong record of inward investment, although it did not suddenly arise in the past ten months. All the big names are here, and small supplier companies extract the benefits. Enterprise Ireland should put in place a system so that when large companies come into an area there will be a tightly focused supplier programme enabling suppliers to upskill and supply them. In that way they can create a business stream for them. Deputy Lawlor referred to the announcing of 300 jobs, but it is a question of spin-off jobs. The programme to which I refer would allow us to maximise the jobs. What occurs at present is haphazard, or it occurs when someone has cop-on locally within the enterprise board or the development company. We need to focus on what I propose.

Everyone tends to criticise the focus on multinational companies coming to the country. We should celebrate their doing so. That they are responsible for nearly 350,000 direct jobs here should be celebrated. They do more to spread the Irish message and the innovation-island message than any Government, regardless of hue, could do. If a company makes a decision to invest in this country, its doing so reverberates throughout the investment community. That is more important than anything any of us can do.

The Taoiseach finally realised - he was not too sure about it this time last year - that Governments cannot create jobs. It is confidence and investment that do so. Rather than disparaging multinationals by stating they would come anyway, we should realise they would not. We need their support.

I spoke before against budgetary decisions in the presence of the Minister of State, Deputy Perry, and am sorry if I sound like a broken record. The increase in the VAT rate by 2% was in our four year plan but was not to be implemented immediately.

I am like a dog with a bone in respect of the redundancy rebates. What has been done in respect of them is wrong. The justification given for them in the social welfare legislation by the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, was that we could not pay for the TalkTalks and Dells of this world. I agreed with her on that so I tabled a parliamentary question on how many such companies actually received the redundancy rebate. I asked for the breakdown in terms of large, small and medium-sized employers. The Minister stated the Department does not have the information.

The difficulty with what has happened and the manner in which it has happened is that it is the small guy again who will take the brunt of the decision. The decision should be reviewed in the context of next year's budget. Perhaps we should set a ceiling such that if a company with 50 employees or less must make a redundancy, it will get the 70% or 75% and bigger companies will get less. The bigger companies can afford it and small ones cannot.

I have no doubt that decisions were taken, in the weeks preceding the introduction of this plan, to lay off people who might not otherwise have been laid off because of the fear that a bigger rebate would have to be paid.

With regard to upward-only rent reviews, there is much talk about the constitutional convention in respect of social issues. That is very important but we are being told this problem cannot be addressed because of the Constitution. This was known before the election, which reflects the joys of being in government. The constitutional convention should examine this issue. It should have job creation at its heart in addition to social issues. If there are provisions in our constitution that, for whatever reason, are blocking the support of enterprise in a way that was never envisaged, such as the clause on upward-only rent reviews, we should change the Constitution. We have changed it for much less important reasons. I hope that in the construction of the constitutional convention, which I gather is a Labour Party creation, an enterprise clause will be slotted in and that this issue will be focused on.

In three months, we will see the colour of the money and what accountability actually means. I have no doubt the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, and the Ministers of State, Deputies Sherlock and Perry, have no difficulty coming to the House to answer for their actions but my difficulty concerns the system behind them, which involves so many Departments that must come here to be answerable. Committees on enterprise, education, social protection, agriculture and tourism are involved. Within the Houses, there should be one committee responsible for the plan. Nobody should be able to hide behind a sectoral committee. The function of the committee I propose should be to monitor, on an all-party basis, the implementation of the jobs plan and to be responsible for its delivery. If we did this, it would do a lot of good for parliamentary democracy.

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