Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State did not explain why at the beginning of this year every single day and every single week the Taoiseach and Ministers were out boasting about a job creation rate of 5,000 per month for 2013. What happened? The job creation rate in the first half of 2014 collapsed relative to that. What happened to the 5,000 a month the Government was boasting about? Is it not very clear that the points we made at the time, which was that half of the claimed job creation in 2013 was most likely - it still has not been confirmed - due to statistical realignment after the census and that the second half was in very low paid sectors such as hotel and catering, were correct? We welcome every single job, but we want decent wages and security for the workers, which is not the trend at present. In the first half of 2014, the total number of jobs in the economy fell by 8,000. That is the reality and it is accounted for by emigration and other factors.

I ask the Minister of State to be straight and honest with the people. Currently counted within the labour force are 95,000 to 105,000 people who are on labour activation schemes simply as a method to take them off the dole figures, which as everybody knows has been widely exposed as trickery. It is employing taxpayers' funds to subsidise sometimes very big employers for semi-slave labour, with workers forced off the dole to work for nothing essentially. Is that not verified by the recent revelation that in the Department of Education and Skills incredibly the State is increasingly dependent on JobBridge and the likes to employ special needs assistants, teachers, cleaners and office staff as semi-slave labour at taxpayers' expense?

Does the Minister of State agree that the Government has been putting out quite sophisticated propaganda to cover up the reality that any recovery in the Irish economy, such as it is, is for the benefit of a small elite at the top and has not really got through in any sense to ordinary working people on the ground? While trumpeting this there is a complete ignoring of the fact that the suffering continues for the victims of austerity and bailout. Of course the Michael Hassenstabs of the world and their ilk will benefit massively from what is going on at the expense of ordinary people. Unfortunately the capitalist media, which are cheerleaders for the Government, were cheerleaders for the speculation and the boom. They then became cheerleaders for austerity and are now giving uncritical headlines for bloated Government propaganda.

I ask the Minister of State to speak directly, for example, to 16 bricklayers and construction workers, members of Unite, who were forced on strike-----

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