Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 428,000 people in this nation unemployed, while countless tens of thousands are under-employed. Most of the unemployed have been unemployed for 12 months or longer. Younger people now account for a figure of between 27% and 33% of the unemployed, depending on the way it is calculated. There is this level of unemployment, despite the fact that since the Government came to power 167,000 Irish people have emigrated and tens of thousands continue to emigrate each year.

More than 240,000 jobs have been lost in the Irish economy since 2006, with the majority of these losses incurring in 2008 and 2009. Over the past year 30,000 jobs have been lost in the public service, including nursing, medical, teaching and clerical and administrative posts. Many public service workers who had been working full-time are now working part-time.

Any examination of the statistics on unemployment and job creation shows huge regional imbalances. Rural Ireland has been particularly neglected. Although 49% of the population live outside the cities, rural areas received only 2.4% of jobs created. Whole communities in rural areas are being shut down by neglect, job losses, emigration and reductions in public services through both the closure of facilities and service level reductions. Is it a deliberate plan of this Government to concentrate the Irish population into already overcrowded cities and major towns? It is all very well to blame the last Government for all of this, but last year in Cavan the IDA and Enterprise Ireland between them created 134 new jobs, while 39 were created in Donegal. Leitrim lost 113 jobs and 187 jobs were created in Sligo. What a result for the west and north west in 2012.

Before the election, Fine Gael and the Labour Party promised that jobs would be their first priority. Emigration would be stopped, jobs would be protected and created, and unemployment levels would decrease. This has not happened and is not happening. It is not happening in Cavan, Donegal, Sligo or Leitrim. It is not happening nationally because the parties in Government - just like their predecessors - continue to focus their energies and taxpayers' money on managing the banking and sovereign debt and hoping that magically something will happen to create jobs. How many times must it be said that we cannot fix the national economy by taking ever more money from the pockets of the very people who sustain our local economies before this Government listens and understands? We cannot contribute to fixing the EU economy and banking system by destroying our national economy.

Politics is about choices, and leadership means bringing about the changes necessary to reach the chosen destinations. Sinn Féin has pointed out that there is a different, better way. We have shown during the debate leading to the 2013 budget that there is a way to achieve the fiscal targets set by Government, but a fairer, sustainable way that gives hope to people in despair, that spreads the burden of adjustment more evenly, and that recognises that the ordinary people of this country should no longer have to suffer because of the failures of others - including, or perhaps particularly, the failures of those in political leadership who made the disastrous decisions that led to the economic ruination of this nation.

I remind the Minister, the Minister of State and Deputies in the Government parties - and those in the party that was previously in government who might be listening in, because they are not here - of a very simple question put to me by a member of the public at a recent meeting in Carrick-on-Shannon: how is it that we have allowed ourselves be brought to a state in which the people fear the Government, rather than the Government fearing the people? I remind the Minister that 2016 is coming fast.

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