Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)

Today we found out that 7,131 young people, under 25 years of age, left the live register in the past month. Most of them left due to emigration and there is a strong view that we are entering into the times of the 1950s and 1980s with regard to the level of emigration. Some 76,000 people, or 1,300 every month, left last year. There is a view that county enterprise boards are the first line of enterprise development. They are what most young people have access to, given that they deal with small, start-up businesses. Hundreds of young people have used county enterprise boards. The amalgamation of the county enterprise board infrastructure into local authorities is dangerous. I do not say that it has no opportunity of working but there is danger. Local authorities have not been oriented towards enterprise in the past.

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