Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I did not think we would be discussing political reform this early in the proceedings, but I agree with much of what Deputy Flanagan has said. However, the fraud that is political reform is absolutely evident right now in this Chamber. Deputy Tóibín and I are here but the Minister has left. He is now attending a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to answer questions ahead of the forthcoming European Council meeting. We should be there, but this business was scheduled at the same time as the committee meeting. The Minister is there now, unchallenged and unquestioned, and we will not get there until after he has finished speaking. That is the reality of so-called Dáil reform. I agree that we need a committee week and many other reforms, although I am not convinced of the merits of a Constitution day.

I am totally frustrated at what we are putting up with here. I am very cynical about this week and frustrated that we are giving over an entire week to this charade. Even the way it is structured is frustrating. The very fact that I am sharing my time with Deputy Tóibín and a member of the Technical Group says it all. They should have time in their own right; they are members of the Opposition too. The Minister's response was interesting. He is normally very mild-mannered and constructive but with a little bit of criticism he gets all prickly and claims that we are not being fair. This is not the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis - that finished on Saturday night. The Fine Gael love-in at the Convention Centre will happen tomorrow night. This is Parliament and we hold the Government to account here. It is tough if the Government does not like our message.

I am often criticised by members of my own party for not kicking hard enough but I got really annoyed at the Minister's assertion that there was no financial plan in place when this Government took office. There was a plan already in place and the Government implemented it. An adjustment of €21 billion had already been made prior to its taking over. We paid a very high political price for that. Many of my party colleagues in the last Dáil who worked incredibly hard paid the price, and this Government implemented our plan. It is not as if the Government parties went in blind; they were briefed by the IMF and the EU. I direct these comments at members of the Labour Party in particular, who seem to have forgotten that they got those briefings. They knew how bad it was. This notion that they did not think things were as bad as they were is absolute and utter political nonsense, for want of a stronger word. Let us not have three days of that kind of talk. Let us focus on the facts and the issues.

I welcome the fact that there has been an increase in employment, and we all need to focus on ways to continue that trend. My difficulty is that the increases have been surrounded by so much spin and palaver. A lot of the jobs growth last year was in agriculture, forestry and fishing, with 26,800 new jobs created in those sectors. The balance of the increase in jobs has been in accommodation and food services, with 17,400 new jobs. I am glad the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, is still here because I want to point out that we must focus more on the accommodation and tourism sectors. We used to have an organisation in this country called CERT, which no longer exists. Fáilte Ireland has divested itself of responsibility for training people to the standards required by a modern hospitality industry. I know the Minister of State is doing some work in this area, but we need to urgently refocus our efforts in tourism and hospitality. If we are going to put more of our eggs in that particular basket, we must make sure that Irish chefs, waiters and hospitality industry staff are trained to the highest level. We used to be very good at that and we need to get back to that space. We are about to enter this year's high season with a shortage of qualified chefs, while more than 400,000 people are still unemployed. There should not be labour shortages in that area. We need an urgent response to this problem.

The biggest problem facing employers in the accommodation and food services sectors is the decision taken by the Government to double employers' PRSI, which came into effect on 1 January. The half-rate of employers' PRSI was part of the Jobs Initiative and was funded by the levy on pensions. My colleague, Deputy Michael McGrath, has often asked the Minister for Finance how the money raised from that levy was spent, but his questions have been consistently dodged by the Minister. There was a surplus raised by that levy, but despite this, employers' PRSI was doubled on 1 January. I met a man recently who owns a small supermarket with 25 employees. His PRSI bill has increased by €30,000 because of this decision. That equates to a job. The decision means that many more jobs will not be created or may even be lost. My worry is that the gains made, particularly in the accommodation and food services sectors, will be lost.

On the figures for agricultural gains, the CSO has issued a health warning in its last two quarterly household surveys and we need to have the figures clarified. When one talks to people in agriculture or forestry, one does not get a sense of that level of employment growth on the ground. We have a Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine who is sticking his head in the sand regarding beef prices at the moment and allowing beef farmers to sail away in the wind. There will be job losses in the beef sector if that situation is not addressed. The folly of today's proceedings is clear. How can we be expected to deal with the enterprise portfolio in ten minutes?

On finance, our banks are still not lending. The schemes that the Government has come up with, namely the microfinance scheme and the credit guarantee scheme, are not working. The Minister keeps telling us that he is conscious they have not worked. The microfinance scheme, for example, is almost 60% below target. We need an urgent review of that scheme. Why will the Minister not allocate some of the budget for the microfinance or the credit guarantee scheme to a pilot scheme on source financing? It has proven to be very successful in other countries, including the UK, allowing small companies to raise small amounts of money to get themselves up and running. The Minister is looking for ideas and this is one we should explore further.

My party has welcomed the local enterprise offices, LEOs, but we are cynical about the number of times they have been announced. They have been announced more times than Joan Collins had husbands. Let us get them up and running, because the legislation has now gone through the Dáil. They were announced in 2012, 2013 and 2014. They are like the Kerry football team - they will be going for four in a row before long. We need to get them up and running and to resource them properly. Many people have difficulties with the concept of LEOs. We are lucky in Mayo in that we have a local authority which is taking the spirit of the LEO as it is intended and has set up an economic investment unit that is going to do a really good job. We are lucky in our county manager, in the head of that unit and in the officials who work in it, but other counties do not have the same luck. The notion of a local authority being business-friendly is something with which everyone is struggling to contend. Generally local authorities view businesses as a source of funding through development levies, parking charges, commercial rates and so forth. To date, local authorities have seen businesses in their areas as a cash cow. If local authorities are to be true partners in business, the LEOs will have to work. They will have to be supported and resourced properly. My party proposed that there be some sort of independent oversight of the LEOs by business people or elected representatives, but that was pooh-poohed by the Government. Our amendment was not supported in the House, and the LEOs will be a full-time creature of the local authorities. That is fine in local authorities that have good management and good members, but in those that do not the LEOs will become as afflicted as the rest, and the manner in which they are created by the legislation will only encourage that.

The regions are not seeing the kind of recovery in job creation and enterprise policy that Dublin, Galway and Cork are. IDA Ireland’s visits schedule shows that every year counties like Meath and Kildare are not getting visits even though they are less than an hour from Dublin. Who put that roads infrastructure in place? It did not just magically appear in the past two years as the Government likes to think it did. When we ask the IDA about jobs for counties around Dublin which are only down the road, we are told we cannot corral people. There is talent in the universities outside of Dublin and a good transport infrastructure but no political will to invest in the regions. While Galway city is flying - good luck to it as Connacht is proud of its city - we need a break in the other parts of the province. We need to give the same opportunities to our people that the city of Galway gets. Up to 64% of IDA flying visits went to Dublin, Cork and Galway last year. That is easy pickings, getting the low-hanging fruit. We have to challenge our agencies to do more with the talented workforce we have.

Ultimately, the Government’s best friend in employment creation continues to be emigration. Up to 13,800 fewer people aged between 15 and 34 were employed by the end of 2013 compared to 2012. The number of 15 to 24 year olds in the workforce fell 11,900 in 2013 with a further drop of 24,700 in the 25 to 34 year old cohort. This is at the same time as the back to education allowance has gone down. Until the Government faces up to the problem, it will stand by as an entire generation leaves this country and entire communities are denuded.

The Action Plan for Jobs published last week contained not one mention of the proposal contained in the fine report commissioned by the Government in January, Entrepreneurship in Ireland. It contained good and radical proposals but these did not make their way into the jobs action plan. There is no sense in commissioning reports when they are ignored because they do not fit the spindoctors’ profile.

The Government will try to make the next three days a love fest. It will be like Woodstock with Fine Gael and Labour, peace and love, etc. I am sorry if we are going to ruin the party but we are. This is not the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis. That concluded at 9 o’clock last Saturday evening. I am sorry if Ministers feel a little bit set upon if the Opposition dares to criticise. That is what we are here for, however, and that is what we will do.

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