Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The reality is that the level of Government spin on so-called economic recovery and jobs over the past two months has reached a scale that is truly Orwellian and bears no relation to the reality of people's lives in this State or outside it who have been driven out by economic crisis. Will the Taoiseach accept that the figure of 400,000 people on the live register who are unemployed or seriously underemployed is only the beginning? Will he accept that one can almost add another 100,000 from various spurious holding schemes such as JobBridge? A total of 20% of those participating found work with their host company and 16% found work with other companies.

The Taoiseach spins the figures. He does not give the real figures that were put out after the Indecon report. Is it not pathetic that the Government must funnel young talented people through this ScamBridge, as my colleague Paul Murphy, MEP, calls it, for 18 months when they might have an offer of a job? If the job is there, why would it not be given at the proper cost rather than at €50 per week? It is pathetic. Does the Taoiseach accept that if one takes the current live register plus the people on the schemes and the 300,000 who have been forced out of our country in economic emigration in the past five years, the real number on the live register would be 800,000, which is an indication of the real scale of the crisis?

Does the Taoiseach accept that his proposal is a Mickey Mouse one, and that is to dignify it? Is he for real in proposing to get rid of a travel tax costing a few euro as a job creation measure? Does he not understand what is going on in the real world of Irish capitalism? In 2007, gross fixed capital formation, in other words, investment, was €48 billion. In 2012 the figure had fallen to €17.4 billion. That is where the story begins and ends. If there is no investment by the private sector there will not be employment. In the eurozone alone, up to €2 trillion in accumulated profits is being hoarded by big corporations which refuse to invest because it is not profitable enough for them to do so. Against that context, has the Taoiseach studied the figures from the Nevin Economic Research Institute which show that every €1 billion that the State invests in job creation - which would be only €575 billion net because of what would come back in taxes - could create 16,750 jobs directly and indirectly? Is the implication not clear for what Government policy should be? Instead of tapping around at the edges, why will he not go to the heart of the matter? I ask him to be specific in his answer because he is more masterly than his predecessor, Bertie Ahern, at spinning acres and acres of cotton wool and figures that engulf us in a miasma through which we cannot find our way.

The Central Bank stated that net domestic wealth in quarter 4 of 2012 was €461 billion. This figure is deliberately not analysed properly in terms of who has the wealth in our society but the Wealth of Nations report from the Bank of Ireland, which was the most recent analysis in this regard albeit published years ago, estimated that 1% of the population held 20% of the wealth. That means 1% held €92 billion, all of them multimillionaires. A tax of 1% on this amount would yield €583 million and if the Government imposed an emergency tax of 5% next year, it would get €2.9 billion. These people would not even miss the money. It is cigar money for them. Why will the Taoiseach not take radical action of this nature in order to invest the money in public job creating investment programmes that could deliver tens of thousands of jobs? The private sector, such as the small businesses about which he speaks, would also blossom from the downstream effects of that investment. That is how he should tackle employment and provide for economic recovery. Why does he not implement measures of this nature rather than the makey-uppy stuff that will leave our people in misery for the coming years, with forced unemployment, parents seeing their children leave and the misery of the dole?

What the Taoiseach was up to in yesterday's Irish Independentwith his article on welfare was an outrage, alongside the Minister for Social Protection. This Government is quickly evolving into the most right-wing Government, economically, in the history of this State. It is outrageous to blame unemployment on the unemployed and the crisis on young people. It is time to call it as it is. Only a few of us are doing so because the media are in the Government's corner.

See this speech in context