Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

With the understandable media attention given to the fallout from the election results, the news that employment growth in the economy has dropped significantly has mainly flown under the radar. Employment growth is a key measure of an economy’s health, yet that growth figure fell to just 0.1% during the first quarter of the year, with the creation of just 1,700 jobs in the entire quarter, a long way short of the 1,000 jobs a week that the Government is claiming as its big achievement. The Taoiseach just mentioned it erroneously. The figures compiled by the CSO for the latest quarterly national household survey are worrying for us all and underline just how weak the domestic economy really is. The small and medium-sized enterprise sector has been the poor relation with far too little attention being paid to it. The money being taken from people’s pockets in taxes and charges is directly impacting on small and medium-sized businesses, with employment in sectors such as wholesale and retail down by more than 29% since 2007. To put the matter in context, in the previous quarter the rate of job creation was 16,300, compared to 1,700 in the first quarter of the year. This is a very significant change and it also means that the Government must revise upwards the projected unemployment rate to 12% compared to the predicted rate of 11.8%. That is before we count the underemployed or those not counted because they are not entitled to a welfare payment and the 80,000 participating in schemes. Of the 258,100 officially unemployed, 60.5% are considered to be long-term unemployed, a reduction of just 3% since early 2012, which is a major concern.

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