Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

-----that fact? Some 40,000 people are leaving the country every year because there are no jobs, not because they are lazy. Is the Taoiseach not ashamed to be in a Government that oversees 40,000 of our best and brightest people leaving per year? Does it not have an obligation to make the investment that would create real jobs, not pretend jobs or a massaging of the figures?

Department of Finance officials last week told the finance committee of an interesting anomaly in the public finances. There used to be something called jobless growth. We now have growthless jobs, that is, virtually no growth while the Government claims a decrease in unemployment and a great deal of job creation. The officials could not quite explain this anomaly. Has the Taoiseach examined it? The only explanation is mass emigration and the Government's massaging of the unemployment figures by putting people into schemes. This is the reality - not jobs, but schemes with no real jobs at the end in most cases. Why does the Taoiseach not admit the truth about the scale of emigration and unemployment? Let us deal with these issues in a real way for those who are languishing in that position involuntarily. They do not want to be there or to be demonised or stigmatised by the Taoiseach or anyone else. What they need are real jobs, not pretend jobs, scam jobs or Gateway jobs, in which people will do the work of local council workers for €20 on top of their dole, thereby replacing full-time and properly paid jobs. It is a disgrace.

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