Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

One thing we need to do is to get people to spend money in the economy rather than save it. The strategy of the Government from the beginning has been focused on restoring the economy and getting the economic infrastructure right to create jobs. In the three years before the Government came to power a staggering 250,000 private sector jobs were lost. It is almost mind-numbing. Naturally, this has had an impact on households throughout the country and their capacity to pay bills, but we have begun the process of reversing that. In the past 12 months 12,000 net new jobs in the private sector have been created. We have several labour market activation measures in place. We will have a Cabinet meeting on the jobs crisis this afternoon. From the very beginning our focus has been on getting our economy repaired and getting people back to work in order to lift them out of the pressures that the Opposition has referred to.

The notion that when faced with a vast deficit we can continue to fund services to the level that we had without increasing taxes is fanciful and the Deputies opposite know that.

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