Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

So, the longer the Minister speaks, the less time I have to speak.

It is important to bring reality back to the situation. Under this Government, unemployment is measured at 14% to 15% on the live register and long-term unemployment is at 60%. Despite some of the recent announcements, job losses continue to outnumber job gains. The only stabilising effect on employment figures in the State is emigration.

Last year, 87,000 people emigrated. Nearly one third of a million people emigrated in the last four years. That level of emigration and people on the live register is an economic failure. Given that the state of the economy is a pre-eminent measure of the quality of a government, surely this is a measure of the Government's failure also. The Minister and the Taoiseach committed to the creation of 100,000 jobs by 2016. The Minister failed to produce targets in this regard and 33,000 jobs net have been lost over the past 12 months. The Department of Finance medium-term fiscal statement predicts unemployment of 13% in 2015. After four years of this Government, even the most optimistic figures predict a reduction in unemployment of no more than a 1%.

Does the Minister accept that these figures indicate a failure in the Government's jobs policy? What level of emigration and unemployment do we have to achieve before alarm bells go off for the Government?

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