Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When Fine Gael and the Labour Party entered government, they inherited an utter mess. It could be argued that they did very little even in opposition to articulate an alternative but they certainly did not create the mess of the property boom and bust. They were not at the reins when employment started to plummet. There would be an element of unfairness in blaming the Government for the mess created by Fianna Fáil. However, if I crash my car and bring it to someone who swears blind that they will fix it, charges me and takes a great deal of time doing little more than pretending to fix the problem, the mess becomes their fault.

The people were told that the Government would fix things, that there would be plenty of jobs, but there has been nothing of the sort. There have been plenty of cuts, with unemployment, emigration and platitudes. This is not solving the problem. I say to Fine Gael and the Labour Party that it is their problem and that they must deal with it. Try as they might, members of Fianna Fáil cannot make it any worse because they are on the Opposition benches. However, the Government parties have made it worse, with unfair budgetary attacks on low and middle income earners and those on social welfare.

Since the Government took office in February 2011, the unemployment figures in Finglas and Ballymun have remained relatively static, but that is as a result of mass emigration. Many football teams are struggling with numbers and have been forced to merge. Thankfully, Ballymun Kickhams have reached the all-Ireland final and I wish the team all the best. They will bring some hope to an area which, despite the very costly and protracted regeneration programme, remains a black spot for unemployment and an area of extreme deprivation in parts. A recent map drawn by the International Centre for Local and Regional Development shows that most of Ballymun and Finglas was suffering deprivation, while some areas suffered from extreme deprivation. That is not news to me. I have called on the Government to develop a jobs task force to focus on the most deprived areas, but these calls have fallen on deaf ears.

In some parts of Ballymun and Finglas unemployment is nearly three times the national average. An economy cannot be built on unemployment. We cannot build an economy with more than 400,000 people relying on social welfare payments to feed themselves. We certainly cannot build an economy on the export of our young people. Some 167,000 people have left Ireland since the new Government was formed and many thousands more have given up the hope the Government will do anything to help them. It has utterly failed to create jobs and most of the time it looks like this is not its focus. It seems much more at home in extending European debts and attacking the low-paid rather than getting people back to work by encouraging job creation.

The Government's plan has been high on rhetoric and low on job creation. Sinn Féin has produced numerous major plans to create jobs and kick-start the economy, a fact the Government, so uninterested in significant job creation, has ignored. It is disappointing but not surprising. Sinn Féin states job creation is the No. 1 priority. We have followed through on this commitment. At the end of 2012 we produced a plan to invest €13 billion in stimulating the economy, €100 million of which would save 15,000 jobs at risk. These are the businesses the Government has failed by imposing spiralling rates and the continuation of upward-only rent reviews. This plan would be funded by €5.8 billion from the National Pensions Reserve Fund, €1.534 billion from the European Investment Bank and €3 billion from the private pensions sector; it not cut €2.6 billion from capital projects as the Government plans to do in the next four years. According to the ESRI, the investment of €13 billion would create an average of 156,000 immediate and long-term jobs. Part of the plan includes a house building scheme to provide social housing which would create thousands of jobs with a costed investment of €1 billion. Instead, the Government spends more than €500 million a year on rent supplement and hailed social leasing as a panacea. This subsidised no one, except landlords, and it is unsustainable.

People are struggling. The Finglas town centre has been allowed to be run down and is a shadow of its former self. The post office in the centre of the village is under threat and even larger businesses and companies are fighting to hold on. I support the motion.

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