Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Bill also makes provision to abolish the job assist scheme, but I wonder why. Will the JobBridge scheme replace it? I hope not. Long-term unemployed people were taken on to the job assist scheme. In recent weeks, a landmark case in the United Kingdom deemed something very similar to the JobBridge scheme to be unlawful. These kinds of incentives are really important.

Before the debate was adjourned, I was trying to draw attention to the fact that there is no strategic focus. We are being told that there is a two thirds to one third approach to cuts and revenue, which was supposed to foster economic growth. However, unemployment has not budged. In fact, it has remained stubbornly high, so that approach is not working.

The lack of any sort of cohesive strategy is also evident in the current handling of public sector reductions. We are hearing about cuts in numbers and wages, but there is no real public debate, engagement or involvement by citizens about the type of services we want or how we would go about paying for them. That is a wasted opportunity.

A recent paper from the Nevin Economic Research Institute states that while we may well recover our banking system and international reputation, we will be left with a number of serious socioeconomic scars from the recession. The chief one of these would be the unemployment crisis.

The scope for investment is limited but there are things that can be leveraged. I would like to have seen them in the Bill. Some things can be targeted, such as broadband, repairing leaky water pipes and retrofitting houses, all of which would draw people in. The issue of carbon tax arises in the Bill, but because we do not ring-fence the take from carbon tax, people see it as being just another general tax. If that tax was ring-fenced, people would accept that, while fuel and heating costs were increasing, they would have the possibility of reducing such costs by insulating their homes. That is a missed opportunity.

SIPTU has argued that there should be a tax exemption on the pension fund levy, given that private pension funds would increase the level of their investment in Ireland by 6%. The union's rough calculation comes to an investment prospect of €4.5 billion, so it is not without the decent prospect of a return. I am not talking about throwing money at anything, but if the National Pensions Reserve Fund was targeted towards job-rich growth, it would be the right way to go.

As regards the take from corporation tax, some of the companies that get the benefit of our human capital - the likes of Google - pay minuscule amounts of tax. Some of the reasons for that are not necessarily about research and development. They should be re-examined so that they can make a contribution to the education system that will return additional people.

A speaker on the Government benches referred to great optimism and the fact that Moody's and Standard & Poor's were complimentary about us at the moment. I would remind the House that those ratings agencies were the very people who once told us we had a great economy and that our banks were triple-A rated. I would be careful about using those kinds of sources as being reliable, given that they got it so wrong in the past.

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