Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleagues for bringing this important issue to the Dáil. When it comes to caring for and investing in young people, we must face it that the State's record is pretty dismal. Historically, Governments have had little tolerance for young people, particularly those who come from poorer backgrounds or who have been failed by our education system. For many people, the Labour Party's lurch to the right on social and taxation issues since entering government has been hard to take. In advance of the 2011 election, there was real hope out there that Labour would soften the worst of Fine Gael and that social justice would prevail in the coalition Government. Labour Ministers, on taking up office, soon put paid to any prospect of this. When it comes to the Labour Party's treatment of our young people, the numbers speak for themselves. Since this Government took up office, 105,000 young people have left the State. There are 18,000 fewer young people employed since Labour and Fine Gael entered government. These are startling figures. Official youth unemployment is at 30% but many thousands more are not captured in the official figures. Youth unemployment in Ireland is 17% higher than the EU average.

What is the Government response? Budget 2014 promised a paltry 4,500 additional places for young people. Last year, Labour promised 10,000 training places but has delivered only 5,500 so far. The Government's over-promised and under-delivered Action Plan for Jobs contains 275 recommended actions, of which just four relate to youth. I find this astonishing when youth unemployment and emigration is at an historic high and the Government response is to allocate just over 1% of an action plan on jobs to getting our young people back to work.

Not satisfied with those acts of negligence and merely to kick someone when they are down, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, delivers a whopping cut of 30% to young jobseekers despite promising time and again that the Labour Party would protect basic social welfare payments. So much for that. What makes this dishonesty all the more unpalatable is the absolute brass neck of the Labour Party to flounce around the capital city holding public meetings advocating the benefits of a youth guarantee, one it is actively failing to deliver on. Just two months ago, Fine Gael and Labour MEPs voted against increasing the EU budget allocation for youth employment measures. Meanwhile, at home, the Government allocated a miserly €14 million although no one, including the Minister, seems to know what exactly this drop in the ocean will be spent on or what new and additional spending, if any, is to go towards its youth guarantee.

Sinn Féin has put forward a solution to the challenge of funding an ambitious youth guarantee programme. We have proposed ring-fencing wealth tax income for jobs for young people. This would provide the necessary scale of investment to get our young people into appropriate training and back to work yet when we raise the prospect of a wealth tax it is Labour Ministers who shout loudest against the very idea.

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