Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If the Deputy wishes to give specific cases we will deal with specific cases but that is not what he is doing; he is making a political charge. He also has made a wild charge about losing jobs. The jobs were lost by the previous Government at a rate of 250,000 in the three years before this Government took office. In the past 12 months alone, over 30,000 additional jobs have been created in this country and we have a lot more to do. The level of unemployment has dropped for the first time since the beginning of the crisis and it is now down to 13.5% from over 15%. The number of people who are long-term unemployed is also down from 9.2% to 8.1%. We have a lot more to do in that area, including the introduction of the youth guarantee to get young people in particular back to work; increasing investment in our country in order to create jobs and delivering better public services, including the delivery of more medical cards with less money available to the State. That is the achievement of this Government and we are going to continue to do it. I know that every single day the Deputy has an opportunity he will come in here to berate and denounce that achievement because that is the political game he is pursuing. Let us concentrate less on the political charges and more on the needs of the people of this country which this Government is delivering on.

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