Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The employment situation has improved significantly. The number of people out of work is falling and the number of people with jobs is increasing. We warmly welcome that but there is no room for complacency when 350,000 people are still on the live register, as well as 86,000 on activation programmes. While I do not seek to demean activation programmes and their role as a stepping stone to real employment, these numbers reveal the scale of the crisis of unemployment. Approximately 160,000 people are long-term unemployed. We need to take a number of steps to deal with this issue. Among the leaks made in recent weeks was a suggestion on supporting self-employed people by extending a tax credit to them that is equal to the PAYE credit. There was no reference to that suggestion in the Ministers' statements.

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