Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not that disappointed that neither of the appropriate Ministers is here, because they never listen to us anyway. Fortunately, there will be an audience watching outside the House who are far more important than them, and that is who the message is for.

I have to give the Government credit: it has pulled off a master-stroke in this budget which will lead to a reduction in unemployment numbers. It definitely will. It is brilliant, a really smart thing to do. The Government will reduce unemployment numbers, but what will the consequences be? The number it will reduce will be that of people in the 22- to 25-year age bracket, and it will reduce their number by running them out of the country. That has always been the policy. It was the policy for my family in the 1980s and it is the same policy for the people of this generation.

The Government claims that no core payments have been cut. I am sorry but, the last time I looked, people in that age bracket were actually human beings, so how the Government can say their payments were not cut I do not know. Maybe the Government's logic is to pull a lever and to encourage them to go back to work or into a training place by cutting back on their money. We have been told by the Government that its target is to increase employment by 1.5% next year, which is in the region of 30,000 people. That is its definition of success, although I would not deem it a success. However, if the Government is successful, that will still leave well over 400,000 people unemployed. Despite the lever the Government has pulled, where does it expect these people to go? It will not be able to get them a job. Many of these people will already have degrees and will have gone through training. What is the Government going to put them on - a communications course, even though they already have a degree in English? They will have only one route to go, and that is to leave the country. It is no coincidence, because it is exactly bloody well what the Government wants them to do, because that is its solution. Next year, the Government will say: "Look, the unemployment figures are down". If there were a tsunami in Galway tomorrow and the whole population were wiped out, within two weeks the Government would announce with a straight face that it had reduced unemployment in the western region. That is what it is doing with the people who have to leave this country.

The reason I could not give a damn about the Ministers being here or not is that this message is for the young people whom the Government has shafted. However, while there might not be many jobs, there are jobs coming up next May. I would suggest that one of the reasons the Government has made cuts affecting these people is that they are less likely to vote. Not only will I be calling on them to vote next May, I will be calling on them to apply for all of these jobs that are coming up, because it is their last chance before the Government runs them out of the country. There are 18 of these jobs in community development, which pay about €30,000 a year, coming up in Carlow, 18 in Cavan, 28 in Clare, 55 in Cork county, 37 in Donegal, 63 in Dublin, 40 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, 40 in Fingal, 18 in Galway city and 39 in Galway county. Before I go on, by the way, if they start off on €30,000, they could end up being paid what the Taoiseach is paid, which is about €200,000 a year. There are 33 jobs available for these people in Kerry, 40 in Kildare, 24 in Kilkenny, 19 in Laois, 18 in Leitrim, 40 in Limerick, 18 in Longford, 29 in Louth, 30 in Mayo, 40 in Meath, 18 in Monaghan, 19 in Offaly, 18 in my own county of Roscommon - and, by God, we will be making sure they apply for those jobs - 18 in Sligo, 40 in south Dublin, 40 in Tipperary, 32 in Waterford, 20 in Westmeath, 34 in Wexford and 32 in Wicklow. There are 918 new jobs in total on the way for all of those people to apply for. That is what they have got to do because there is no point in waiting for the Government to do it. Not only does the Government not want to listen to alternatives, even if we provide them; the Ministers are not even here in the first place. That is what people have to do. For a century people have sat back and waited for the Labour Party, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to do it. Guess what? It has not happened; it is never going to happen. The only way things will change in this country is if people go out there and take those jobs off the Government next May, because it has shafted them.

The good news for the Minister, Deputy Quinn, is that Labour Youth has already put out a press release condemning the Government's shafting of the young people of this country. Hopefully, they will leave Labour Youth in their droves and join with the people I am calling on to take these jobs next year, and cut the spokes of the political bicycle. Come the next general election, they will be there to lead the charge and to blow very strong winds of change, if they are still here, and take these parties out of government.

The Minister, Deputy Quinn, is not a socialist. As Deputy Boyd Barrett put it so well, no one is surprised at what Fine Gael has done. They are Blueshirts; they are fascist to the core. The Labour Party is meant to be different. It was meant to be socialist - in other words, to take care of the vulnerable. What has it done with the vulnerable? It has now put some people into a situation in which they will have to be buried in a paper bag, because the Government will not provide the money for them.

That is not socialism.

If the Minister is interested in creating jobs - he appears to think nobody has answers - why not do something about the cost of living in this country and the fact that the Competition Authority is a joke and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, will not do anything about it for obvious reasons? Why not do something about the fact that local authority rates are at such a high level one would have to be daft to set up a business, or about upward only rent reviews? No, as usual in this country, the Government's policy is to get rid of the unemployed by not solving the problem and dumping them out of the country. Then it tells us it did not cut core social welfare rates. To me, the people concerned are human beings, but to the Government they are not. Somebody came up with a focus group and it was decided to shaft them and that the group with five year olds and under who will get medical cards might come to the Government's side. It is about more than focus groups; it is about people. Sadly, however, we know what the Government thinks of them - get them out of the country as they are a bloody nuisance.

See this speech in context