Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If we do not take action, we will cost small suppliers around the country jobs and we will lose businesses. Ultimately, English-based suppliers and stationery companies will benefit. Jobs will be lost and money will leave local economies.

If the jobs action plans are to mean anything, we will have to move away from the silo way of doing government. I always make this point. I do not mean it in a political way. I welcoming the opening of the silos in the case of the Departments of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and Social Protection. The rest of the silos are still closed, which means Departments are operating in isolation from one another at a time when we have the biggest national crisis on our hands. We need the kind of effort that is currently being made to reorganise our banking system to be made with regard to joblessness and unemployment.

We need to know that just over 5,000 extra activation places were created last year, according to CSO figures. I am a fan of JobBridge and I make no apologies for that. I believe the more work experience a person has and the closer he or she is to the labour market, the better the chance that person has of getting a job. Deputy Lyons has given the figures in this regard. However, we need more JobBridge places. There are communities around the country screaming out for CE places because they have worthwhile local projects but they cannot get the places. I know of a group that was willing to sponsor materials and cover the insurance but it could not get the places. I do not believe there has ever been a situation in the history of this country in which there has been such a skilled group of people on the live register, with skills in many sectors that they want to use. They want to gain new skills, but while they are waiting for that, can they not use those skills they have for the development of community and social facilities and in our health and education services? The answer is "No," they cannot, because Department A will not speak to Department B or C to come up with joint programmes to allow that to happen. If a whole-of-government approach is to mean anything, it will mean that silly barriers such as this are torn down.

I welcome the news today of the group appointed by the Minister. It consists of six very impressive people who have given enormous service to this country and who will now be in charge of monitoring the so-called disruptive reforms. Let them disrupt the system of government, which is the most disruptive reform we need, so that these barriers, these silos, are knocked down. Let them not be trapped by the system. I have asked the Minister previously what kind of support will be available to them. Will they be swamped within the big system of government? While I know some of them will not let themselves be swamped, when one gets stuck in quicksand, there are very few ways to get out, no matter how strong one is. It is up to the Minister to protect them. It is up to him to ensure their skills, talents and ambition for this country do not get lost in that system, that they have the chance to be disruptive and that we celebrate the fact that they can be disruptive. The Minister owes it to those six individuals who have had the courage to stand up and put their names to this initiative, and to businesspeople around the country, to ensure this works and to ensure they have the protection they need to avoid being drowned within the system. If they can work, there is hope and there is a chance of job creation. At the end of the day, that is what we are all about. The Minister can have his big PR occasions and the Taoiseach can write articles for The Irish Timeson every anniversary of the election of the Government claiming that employment is its number one priority. However, until we start denting those figures, and until the 330,000 people who are depending on this Chamber for a job, or at least for the conditions that create jobs, see that figure going down, we are not getting anywhere. The Government has nobody to blame but itself for creating the expectation that it would do this in the first place.

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