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

In his budget speech last year, the Minister for Finance said "The core [mission] of this Government is to get Ireland working again". Therefore the core mission and unifying aim of the Government was to bring down unemployment.

As the Minister has set the yardstick, Members should consider how he measures up to it. When the Government took office, the unemployment rate was 14.1% and it now stands at 14.8%. However, that does not even begin to tell the story. It does not relate how almost two out of three of those who are unemployed have been unemployed for at least 12 months and more than one in three of them have been so for at least two years.

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