Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Having listened to the Minister, I am torn between laughing and crying. The idea of helping the unemployed to fulfil their responsibilities and ensuring they are not so dependent on the welfare state is so ridiculous that it really does not bear thinking about. Many of the people to whom the Minister refers have worked for most of their lives. What they need are new jobs. There cannot be economic recovery without jobs and therein lies the problem for the Government. The greatest indictment of the Administration is that there are fewer people at work now than there were when it took office 20 months ago. The Minister can waffle on all she likes about all the programmes with fancy names for which her Department has responsibility. The reality is, however, that even though 5,000 people may have gone through the JobBridge scheme, not too many of them obtained employment at the end of their involvement with it. The scheme has been unmasked as nothing more than a cheap labour scam from which only a couple of hundred people benefited by obtaining full-time employment.

In recent months we have witnessed an assault on the idea of the permanent pensionable job, which is becoming something of which people are almost ashamed. That is another mark of the record of the Government, which has facilitated a race to the bottom. Everyone is aware that these are difficult times. That is obvious, but the point which is being missed is that there is an alternative. The difficult choices which are being foisted on people are actually been foisted on those at the bottom. As a direct result of the Government's policies, those in the bottom 10% of the population have experienced a 26% reduction in their incomes, while the wealth of those at the top has increased by 8%.

A vicious campaign has been carried out against public sector workers - supposedly the root of all evil - by Independent Newspapers and others. We saw the reality of what was actually happening earlier today, when teachers protested outside Leinster House. Those who are now commencing their careers in teaching are going to be paid approximately €100 more than those on the minimum wage. Those to whom I refer currently receive a handful of hours' worth of teaching each week. They hang around schools in the hope someone will get sick in order that they might get jobs. The people concerned cannot claim social welfare because they are working every day and cannot apply for family income supplement, FIS, because they are not working 19 hours a week. The Government's answer is that it is not possible to change the computer system in order to accommodate them.

The Government is presiding over a policy that involves upside-down economics. In other words, it is doing the opposite of what should be done. The opportunity is being taken to reverse the State welfare benefits that were fought for and developed over decades. There has been a great deal of discussion about competitiveness and wages. However, wages only account for 2% of the measure of competitiveness. In fact, wages are not the problem at all. The Government's approach in this regard was summed up in an e-mail I received from the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation inviting me to the official opening of a 24 hour McDonald's restaurant in Swords. Does the Government ever intend to get real? Any value that will result from the creation of jobs at this restaurant will be completely wiped out by the drain on the health service to which the consequent increase in obesity levels will give rise.

The Government should accept that hanging on to the coat-tails of the private sector is not delivering and should reverse its policy in this regard. I would not expect anything more of Fine Gael. For the Labour Party, however, what is happening is an absolute embarrassment. Has the penny not dropped that the private sector cannot deliver any more and that the only way to turn matters around is by putting in place a State-led stimulus package of socially necessary work? The work to which I refer needs to be done and if it were, it could make Ireland a better place. On each occasion we have raised this matter, the Government has asked from where we would get the money. The Administration has no difficulty in borrowing money in order to pay unsecured bondholders and a banking debt that has nothing to do with ordinary people. Why can it not seek funds from the European Investment Bank and invest them in Electric Ireland - formerly the ESB - which has a tremendous track record as a powerful semi-State company? The company could then use this money to develop the tremendous potential in our wave and wind energy resources and make Ireland a world leader in energy generation. What we should be doing is promoting the type of pioneering spirit that marked the Ardnacrusha project which was completed during the ESB's early years. The projects to which I refer are instead being given to private companies, many of which have former Labour Party people on their boards. These companies stand to make billions. Unless we take the lead, borrow money from the European Investment Bank and use by means of incentives some of the funds from private pension schemes or those invested in credit unions to finance job creation measures, all that will happen is that Ministers will run around opening 24 hour McDonald's restaurants and make an absolute laughing stock of themselves.

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