Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In congratulating Deputy Calleary for bringing forward this motion I am bound to say that given the circumstances the country is in where we are ravaged by unemployment and drained by emigration it is surreal that the Opposition has to come into this House and use Private Members' time to plead with the Government not to engage in yet another act of wanton job destruction.

I picked out at random a question I put down to the Minister, Deputy Bruton, last year dated 19 July in which I asked him if he was satisfied with the efforts being made by Government to fulfil its election promises and to tackle unemployment. That reply given 15 months ago states:

The Government is acutely aware of the scale of the challenge that we face in combating unemployment, with nearly 440,000 people on the live register. This new Government is committed to getting people back to work.

That reply was given 15 months ago and 15 months later the position has not improved. In fact, it has got worse. As Deputy McGrath said, the official figure is still approximately 440,000 but up to 60% of that represents people who are now long-term unemployed. Another figure we cannot quantify is the number of people who are hiding in the education system or in the various schemes, which I welcome in so far as they go but they mask the true rate of unemployment in this country.

Even more tragically, in the 15 months since the Minister uttered those words across the floor of this House, and these are the Government's figures, 100,000 people have left this country not, as the Minister for Finance would have us believe, to study the seven wonders of the world but because they had no jobs. They had to go abroad to get employment. One hundred thousand people, 2.5% in a population of approximately 4 million, left the country in the past 15 months. That is over 200 a day, and many of those carry with them the skills they acquired here at great expense to the taxpayer. They are the skills necessary for this country to have if we are to trigger an economic recovery.

Last year I recall pleading with the Government not to change the redundancy scheme. It was proposing that employers who were carrying 40% of redundancy payments would have that increased to 85% but the Government went ahead anyway and laid a burden of approximately €0.25 billion a year on the backs of business, particularly small businesses which are the main job creators in this country. That has cost jobs. If time permitted I could give the Minister instances of employers who found it easier to close rather than involve themselves in a partial shutdown because the partial shutdown would cost them so much they would not be able to continue in business. That is a reality.

We now have further kites about increasing PRSI on employers. That is directly taxing work again at a time when unemployment is raging, and now we have this scheme. Deputy Calleary pointed out that we are not comparing like with like but that we are comparing like with different. The fact is if it was four weeks across the 27 member states and if everything was equal, even costs, which are much higher here in many instances, can anybody imagine a worse time to introduce a proposal such as this? What is the grand strategy? I wish I could see it because viewed in isolation it makes no sense to me to continue to load burden after burden on the backs of the people who are creating employment at a time when the country is racked by unemployment. That is the reality.

The Taoiseach told us as late as yesterday that 58 out of 67 of the boxes in the jobs activation programme or the programme for jobs, whatever it is called, have been ticked in the last quarter yet the situation continues to get worse.

As he understands the problems facing small businesses, many of which are hanging on by their fingertips, I wish the Minister of State, Deputy John Perry, had the authority to reassure them that this further imposition in charges will not go ahead. In doing so, the Government would do more for job creation and to instil confidence than what is in all of the boxes it has ticked and will tick.

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