Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Deputy O'Dea referred to the OECD and troika report. That report began by saying that had the previous Government, of which the Deputy was a distinguished member for a long time, introduced any of the reforms with regard to helping people to get back to work, we would have entered the crisis with 100,000 fewer unemployed people. The report recognised that we began with the extraordinary legacy left by the Deputy's Government and that there had been almost no activation, particularly of people who are long-term unemployed.

In other countries such as France, labour market reforms were done very rapidly, and some of the reforms collapsed.

We are working on reforms which reflect Ireland and its people, the current position of the public and private sectors and large and small businesses. Recently I established a jobs council, the members of which are leading people from industry, the retail sector and areas such as information technology. The council is chaired by Mr. Martin Murphy, CEO of Hewlett Packard. Labour market economists and people from civil society organisations are also involved in helping people to get back to work. We will do this in a way that takes into account conditions in Ireland.

I do not know what the Deputy was hinting at or whether he was suggesting we should go down the route taken in the United Kingdom. I did not think that was Fianna Fáil's policy. We should take into account the needs of the unemployed. I anticipate that by next Monday, the live register will have fallen below 400,000 for the first time since May 2009. That is proof of what the OECD was talking about. When its secretary general visited Ireland recently, I spent the large part of a day with him and he was extremely complimentary about what we were doing.

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