Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)

I am not surprised to hear Deputy Boyd Barrett's rhetoric. One would expect nothing less. I assure the Deputy that the Government's priority is to create jobs. The first step is to stabilise the economy to sustain the jobs that we already have. We have halted the shedding of jobs experienced in 2008 to 2010. There have been a number of positive moves and the Government has developed a number of initiatives in the past 12 months to create new employment and reskill people for different employment. My constituency is an example of an area that was dependent on the construction industry, which has collapsed. We must reskill people to work in other areas.

I presume that Deputy Boyd Barrett is like the rest of the Independents, who switch off the news whenever there are positive stories. Recent months have seen a number of positive developments in the jobs market with the creation of several thousand jobs. Eli Lilly in Kinsale, County Cork will invest €300 million and create more than 500 jobs, 200 of them directly and 300 in the construction of its plant. PayPal announced 1,000 jobs recently. In Dublin, Mastercard will create 130 jobs in its global technology office. Abbott in Sligo will create 175 jobs. In Galway and Kildare, Hewlett Packard will create 280 jobs. These six examples involve the creation of 2,150 jobs, but I presume that the Deputy switched off the news when he heard their announcements. He would rather be negative, negative, negative. I have no problem with that, as it is his role as a politician, but the incentives put in place by the Government in recent months will see a positive outcome.

I was in Germany during St. Patrick's week and visited agencies there, including Bord Bia, the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and Tourism Ireland. They had positive news. I also attended the MEDICA Trade Fair, where 15 Irish companies in the medical field and primarily based in Galway had some positive news.

We have halted the shedding of jobs and are entering into a more positive period. As the Deputy knows, the end result of the upturn in the economy will be the creation of jobs. If we are to attract foreign direct investment we must have a positive economy, which is our aim.

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