Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Some 87,000 left this State last year and the same number left the year before. That is a failure of political leadership and a failure of every Member in the House who supports a Government with its head stuck in the sand.

I got a letter today from an individual who talked about the misery of being unemployed and about having to turn to professional counselling services to try to scrape her way out of the dark hole she is in. She is still unable to get on a job activation scheme. I know the situation from people in my constituency who have never seen the good times, if they ever existed, where employment was available. We in Donegal and the north west, in particular in the Border region, have always suffered from a higher level of unemployment. The level of unemployment today in Donegal is 28%. Some Deputies think that is acceptable and some of them think it is acceptable to come in here and talk absolute nonsense and rubbish without any reference to the facts and figures.

Let us look at the details of Sinn Féin's proposal. Earlier I heard Deputy Mulherin say that Sinn Féin's wealth tax would scare off every farmer in the State. Has she not read our policy document? It states that farm income and farm assets are not included in the assessment of wealth tax. Perhaps she has not looked at the legislation we drafted and published, which provides more detail on this. Perhaps her contribution was just lazy political representation from a party that has shown a pathetic attempt to deal with the massive crisis we face.

There are things that can be done. What both parties in government said when in opposition was that there would need to be an investment in the real economy to get people back to work. We agree with that. Where we differed at the time was with regard to the scale and size of that investment and how it would be done. I would settle at this point in time for the then Fine Gael or Labour Party plan for employment in this State, because at that time they were promising to put €7 billion and more into the economy to get people back to work. The young people of this State and the mothers and fathers who must wish them goodbye at Dublin, Cork or Knock airports cannot wait for another two years for the Government to get its act together. This needs immediate action and attention.

The figures do not lie. There are 430,000 people unemployed, some 60% of them long-term unemployed. One in every three young person in the State is unemployed. This is the shameful record of a Government that has its head so far in the sand that it cannot see what is happening in its communities. It should have had the decency to say it wants to do more, rather than trot out the kind of bull that has been thrown out tonight. This type of attitude from the Government gives no hope to people who are suffering due to long-term unemployment. There is no recognition from the Government of the crisis that is gripping communities the length and breadth of the State.

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