Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is touching on a very important point. We are experiencing recovery in this country but it is not a balanced recovery, as the Deputy rightly said.

It is clear that parts of our main cities are doing very well now but other parts are not and rural areas, small rural towns in particular, have yet to feel the real impact of recovery. That is a work in progress. The Government has proposed a number of initiatives and if Deputy Higgins reads the comprehensive nature of the jobs strategy outlined by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Employment he will see specific balancing initiatives in the package to ensure that every place is impacted upon positively.

We had a comprehensive rural support system through Leader in the past and I wish to have an analogous system to support inner city areas where there are real pockets of inequality and underdevelopment. I hope that can be manifest as well. We want to front-load the funding to deal with the themes we set out during our Presidency - youth unemployment and the youth guarantee - because Deputy Higgins is correct that the most important element is getting people back to work.

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