Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is correct. I am delighted the Minister of State, Deputy Donohoe, is present. I listened to his performance on radio on Saturday afternoon last between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Twice during the programme he repeated the claim that 61,000 jobs were created in our economy in the past year. That claim has been repeated ad nauseam during this debate. I have always been one to acknowledge if a person in direct opposition to me politically does something right and if I am corrected in respect of a particular matter, I accept it. In recent years, however, I have found the level of propaganda rather than analysis and truth to be quite mind-boggling.

I do not know whether the Minister of State has considered the detailed statistics which lie behind the claim that 61,000 jobs were created in the past year. Does he really believe that 61,000 jobs were created during the past 12 months? If he does, then he believes that there was a 30% increase in employment in agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Does he really believe that this was the case during the worst year we have experienced? Does he believe that employment in the area of agriculture has increased by 30% and that 26,800 additional jobs have been created on farms? He knows immediately that this is not true. All he needs to do to establish that it is not true is check the number of single farm applications. If he does so, he will discover that the number of such applications received was not significantly different to that received during the previous year. If the Minister of State believes the claim with regard to the creation of 61,000 additional jobs last year, then he also believes that there was a 30% increase in the number created in the area of agriculture, fisheries and food. It should be noted that the processing industry was not taken into account in the calculation of this increase.

Deputy Deasy bemoaned the fact that the region in which he resides did not do too well in the context of the creation of employment. If the Minister of State really believes the figures are correct, then surely his colleague, Deputy Deasy, should be the happiest man in the House. If the figures presented by the Government are to be believed, they indicate that the Border, midlands and western, BMW, region outperformed the south and east region including Dublin by two to one in terms of the percentage increase in employment. That is quite an extraordinary claim. As representatives from the BMW region, Deputy Martin Ferris and I would love to believe this to be true. According to the statistics, the best performing region in the country, with an increase of 8.4% increase in employment, is the south east. The next best performing region is the Border region, with an 8% increase. After that comes the midlands region, with a 5% increase. Dublin is doing worse than the national average with only a 2.8% increase in employment. Next comes the west, which includes Galway city, at 2.7%. Then we have the south west, including Cork city, with an increase of 1.2% in employment. Finally, we have the mid-west, at 0.5%, and the mid-east, at 0.07%. If the Minister of State believes these statistics and if he is of the view that they reflect how the economy is developing, he should ensure that the Government moves fast to invest more money in rural areas. According to the propaganda being put about, these are the areas in which the level of employment appears to be growing at an enormous rate.

When it published results relating to this matter, the CSO issued a warning. It pointed out that the largest rates of increase - 29.8% or 26,800 - were recorded in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector. The CSO also indicated that it can be noted that estimates of employment in this sector have been shown to be sensitive to sample changes over time. It stated, "Given the continued introduction of the sample based on the 2011 Census of Population as outlined in the note on the front page of this release [it was on the front page and those in government could not see it], particular caution is warranted in the interpretation of the trend in this sector at this time." In other words, what the CSO is stating is that for a number of reasons the figure for agriculture is a statistical aberration. Of course, one of the reasons the CSO provides is that the sample has changed.

The other reason is quite simple and anyone who lives in a rural area will understand it. If one considers the CSO's figures, one will detect a huge increase in the level of employment among males. What has happened is that in the past many males were employed in construction and other industries. When they were laid off, they applied for jobseeker's benefit. When they were surveyed, they were assessed as being in receipt of a jobseeker's payment, that is, unemployed. The south east, the Border region etc. show up so well in terms of the figures to which I referred earlier because in many cases the people in question live in rural areas and own small farms. We are all familiar with part-time farmers who also engage in off-farm employment. When the jobseeker's benefit of those to whom I refer ran out and they applied for jobseeker's allowance, one of two things happened: either they had working spouses and, in 90% of cases, were not entitled to payment or their farms were bringing in sufficient income to preclude them from receiving payment. When they were surveyed again and asked if they were in receipt, they replied in the negative. When they were asked if they had jobs, they replied that they are employed in agriculture. Those are the facts.

For that which I have outlined to be presented as the creation of 30,000 new jobs, for it to be continually repeated to the nation by the Minister of State as if he really believes it and for every Deputy opposite to be prepped by various backroom experts, who are supposed to be available to the Government and who analyse the figures in question, to come to the House in order to parrot this total fiction is absolutely despicable.

They come in like parrots, one after another, repeating this total fiction and it is absolutely despicable. Anyone who spent five minutes examining the figures would know that there is more truth in the Grimm fairy tales than in the fairy tale of the 61,000 jobs that the Government has created.

The problem is that the Government representatives continue to state that this day is about letting the media know the great things that are happening here but the tragedy is that no one in the media is in the House for the debate. They have long switched off from it. They will not pick up on the real debate that is taking place in the House today when people go behind the prepared scripts, which are full of propaganda, start examining the facts and then deal with the facts.

When I tweeted last Sunday that I would show this week how these figures were wrong, Councillor Lacey could not take it on the chin. Being an Oatlands boy like myself, he probably knew I had done my homework. He tweeted back that we were losing jobs when we were in power. Of course we were in the last years we were in power but there was a major increase in jobs in the early years we were in power and there are still more jobs in the economy now than there was in the 1990s. In any event, the fact is that the jobs have not been created.

It is time that we had debates in the House based on the facts seen in the cold light of day. One thing among many that disappoints me about the Government is that it seems to be all propaganda. There is no serious analysis or debate and no effort to seriously try to work together to see how we can improve the country. The Government parties would not work together on the hard decisions that had to be made and since they got into government, they continue to try to live with the myths they created about themselves. Certainly, they do not want a cold light of analysis to be shone on what is actually happening in the economy in order that we can do something about it.

At the end of the day, it is cold comfort to all those on the social welfare system for those in government to be putting out figures that they know to be false. Those affected know from personal experience that those jobs are not available and that there are no queues of employers coming out of the woodwork seeking to employ people. Therefore, I hope that later this evening some member of the Government will come into the Chamber and recognise that the 61,000 figure is totally false and has no basis in fact and that employment creation last year came to 30,000, half of what the Government has stated.

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