Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this Private Members' motion. I make no excuse to Deputy Lyons or anybody else for saying this Government does not care. The fact is that if this Government cared, it would stop destroying jobs and creating unemployment in this country. The first thing it would do is to stop the destruction of jobs in the public service, where 30,000 jobs are already gone and another 8,000 jobs are targeted for this year, 4,000 of those in the health service. That is job destruction, not job creation. If this Government cared about job creation it would stop that destruction of jobs, stop throwing those people on the live register and stop creating unemployment. It would start creating employment and allow the State to start creating employment.

The private sector has failed under the last Government and under this Government. It is not creating jobs and it will not create jobs. The State will have to get involved in job creation and should have done so long before now. This is because there is a huge investment strike among private industrialists, who are not prepared to create jobs. The Government will simply have to step forward and allow the State to do the job because, as I said, private enterprise has not done it and will not do it.

Austerity did not work under the last Government and it is not working under this Government. Extracting billions of euro from the economy did not work under the last Government and is not working under this Government either. As we all know from walking down the main street of any city, town or village in the country, the extraction of billions upon billions of euro from the economy is creating further recession, further closures and further job losses. We see what has happened. It is the policy that was pursued by the last Government and it is the policy pursued by this Government. When they stood in the last election, Fine Gael and the Labour Party said they were going to change things. We were going to have a democratic revolution and it would all be different. Of course, the minute they came to power, they took on the Fianna Fáil-Green Party clothes and implemented austerity and cutbacks. That policy has created an appalling vista, with over 14% of the population, or 430,000 people, unemployed, of whom 60% are long-term unemployed, and 27% of young people unemployed. Last year, 12,800 full-time jobs were lost and 14,000 part-time jobs were created, which means we are effectively standing still. This is an admission that the Government itself simply must get involved in job creation. We need an economic stimulus and economic growth to create jobs. Until we have that, we will simply have huge numbers of people on the dole queues and leaving the country at a rate of 200 per day.

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