Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

We all acknowledge that over the past years this country has gone through major restructuring in terms of how the economy works. The Minister already stated that if all the eggs are in one sector and if it fails, it has a monstrous effect on the economy. We are trying to put in place a set of programmes which will allow people to upskill and retrain, so that we have a skillset. I mention the number of construction jobs alone which were lost. The only way we can get people back into the workforce is to upskill and retrain them but that does not happen within one, two or three months. We must allow time for that to take effect.

All sides of the House must acknowledge - let us be apolitical about this - that we have provided incentives on the Revenue side and on the employer side and we have allowed for credit to be made available through the micro-enterprise partial loan guarantee scheme. The Government is actively intervening to try to stimulate the economy and to create the right conditions.

I take the point made about the cost to business and a reduction in the regulatory burden. I would acknowledge that we need to do more on EU targets in terms of the cost of the regulatory burden but I would also say there is a discussion at Cabinet level in regard to local authority funding and the cost to business at local level. Local authorities cannot continue to rely, in the way they have done, on the ratepayers who have been squeezed in terms of funding local government. The Cabinet is discussing this issue. However, one must acknowledge that because of the tidal wave which hit us as a result of the collapse in the construction sector, in particular, which had fuelled the economy, we had to restructure the economy on macroeconomic grounds and put in place these types of programmes which do not bear fruit in the timeframe about which the Deputy spoke. It will take longer.

See this speech in context