Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There were more than 17,000 citizens on the live register in County Louth when the Government came into power. Now, two years later, there are 17,207. The only reason the figures are not worse is the high level of emigration. Some 87,000 citizens left this State last year. Any government which looks to emigration, particularly of its young people, as a solution is a government that is not worthy of office.

The last time citizens fled overseas in these numbers was after an Gorta Mór. In the last four years, this State has shed more jobs per capita than any other Western state since the Great Depression. That is the scale of the crisis. There are huge numbers of young people unemployed. The current rate is about 27.7%, which is one of the highest across the EU. As the Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, must know from his constituency, these high levels of youth unemployment and emigration are having a devastating effect, particularly in rural Ireland.

Local towns, villages and townlands are unable to field full GAA teams because so many of our young people are playing football, camogie and hurling in Perth, Brisbane, Vancouver, Boston and London.

Sinn Féin and I have no hesitation in welcoming jobs announcements when they are made. There have been positive investments in Louth in recent times, among them PayPal and Ebay. These announcements are good news, particularly in the Dundalk region, and will hopefully draw the attention of other companies to the potential of Louth as a location for investment. However, when we look in more detail at the PayPal announcement, we see that as many as one half of the 1,000 jobs delivered will be filled overseas due to the language requirements. This Government needs to put in place a strategy that ensures we have the necessary skills for companies which want to create jobs here. It is also true that what has been announced thus far is only a drop in the ocean compared to what is required. Census figures show that County Louth is enduring the worst jobs crisis in decades with an unemployment level that is almost 5% higher than the State-wide average. Some of the many Government announcements never even come to fruition. In November 2012, the Minister of State with responsibility for the NewERA project announced that Nextag, a major network of shopping comparison websites, was to set up its new international headquarters in Drogheda, recruiting 125 people. In February, it was left to the IDA to announce that the promised investment would not be going ahead. The Government's approach to the jobs crisis has been to over-spin and under-deliver.

We were told in September 2011 that the strategic investment fund was to be a major plank of job creation. Yet now 18 months later, there has been no legislation to establish it. The Government's stimulus plan, if it ever does happen, is unambitious and provides for only a €2.25 billion stimulus. The plan does not even recognise the scale of the crisis.

Sinn Féin has put forward a fully costed jobs plan to deal with the need for growth, jobs retention, youth employment and the creation of new jobs. These are the kind of solutions the Government needs to start implementing and the kind of solutions that Labour - the party that claims to represent the interests of workers - should be proposing and implementing to create jobs and sustain existing jobs but Labour has lost its way. I commend the Sinn Féin motion to the Dáil and call upon Deputies, in particular the Minister for State because we cannot give up hope and because he is from a good lineage, to show an example by voting for this motion and against the Government amendment.

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