Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

These statistical questions are important because there is nothing which infuriates people more than being told things are getting better for them when they self-evidently are not. The question relates both to the broader issue of jobs and unemployment and to different sectors and levels of pay. It is a problem from a statistical point of view if we cannot get a proper breakdown of these data. Some of the figures the Minister of State is giving us go back to 2011. We cannot, based on what he is telling us, judge whether the Government propaganda about the great success and improvement in employment is true, and we will not be able to do so for a considerable time. We can, however, conclude, based on what he has said, that if we did not have 20,000 people leaving the country this year and last, there would have been a zero decrease in unemployment.

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