Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

My question related to the detailed report on job creation during 2014 by local authority area and sector. Contrary to much of the propaganda put around by the Government, when the figures are deconstructed and broken down the live register figures are unchanged. The standardised unemployment rate is 10%. The live register basically flat-lined in April with a nominal decline of only 1,800 people, or effectively 0%. When we factor in the rise in the activation numbers, that is, people who have been placed on labour activation schemes - this figure was 2,000 people in March - the figures will cancel themselves out.

My question to the Taoiseach involved having a look at the types of jobs and where those jobs were. In January the Taoiseach said that 40,000 new jobs would be created this year and that unemployment would fall below 10% into single figures. Some 29,000 jobs were created in 2014. Therefore, we will need far more significant job creation to reach even the levels that the Taoiseach indicated. Only 14,400 people were taken off the live register in the first four months of this year. Some 25% of this cohort were put onto labour activation schemes rather than real jobs. This is becoming a serious source for the Government in glossing over the real unemployment figures.

What types of job are being created? Official data shows that fewer than half of the jobs added since March are full-time employee positions, which leaves people at a far higher risk of poverty and low pay. This is reflected in the 70% increase in spending on the family income supplement since 2011. According to Neary, who investigated payment rates and pay breaches, the risk of low pay is much greater for employees on low hours, in that more than one in two of these are low paid, and the risk is similar for employees with temporary contracts. This is becoming a recovery based on low pay and low hours. As of September 2014, the proportion of part-time workers had risen from 19% before the recession to almost a quarter.

At the end of April, 90,000 people were on labour activation schemes and were not included in the live register. This means that, in total, there were 439,000 under-employed or unemployed or on labour activation schemes, which is a very high number. If the figures were being calculated in the US, for example, those people would be included in the figures. Finfacts refers to this as a broad jobless rate of 20%, and this is the term used in the US. The emigration rate is, of course, a big safety valve for this Government and, traditionally, for the establishment in this country. If the emigration rate of the past seven years had stayed at the pre-crisis level, there would be 287,000 more people here in this country, potentially all unemployed. That would increase the number of unemployed and under-employed people to a massive 726,000, and of the unemployed to over 500,000. Other countries such as Spain and Italy do not have the same recourse to or tradition of emigration that we, who are living in an English-speaking country, have. The Government should truly be thankful for the current unemployment rate, given that these people could also be competing for jobs in this economy. According to the statistics, there are 20 unemployed people competing for every job vacancy, which compares to a figure of five in Belgium and 2.1 in Germany.

One in ten people who were taken off the live register have now been put on labour activation schemes. This is a very serious issue which the Government is trying to gloss over; it is a weapon in the armoury of the Government to reduce the unemployment figures. Moreover, one in four young people are unemployed, and half of those who are unemployed have been in that situation for more than a year, so we have a very high youth unemployment rate.

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, reiterated in March that the Government is aiming for sustainable full employment by 2018. However, that was casually and quietly dropped in the Government's spring economic statement. Now, full employment has been redefined as an official rate of unemployment of up to 6%, which compares with actual unemployment rates of 4% to 4.6% in 2006-07. On top of this, the spring statement quietly abandoned the target of full employment, projecting an official jobless rate of 7.8% in 2018 and 6.9% in 2020. This must be the context for the Minister for Finance's insulting comments about people being allergic to work in this country, which really annoyed and infuriated a lot of people.

With regard to geography, which Deputies on the other side of the House should be concerned about, employment growth in Dublin and the mid-east is equivalent to 94% of the total net employment growth. There is a massive geographical imbalance whereby areas outside the Pale are still languishing and stagnating, with the same unemployment figures. The midlands and mid-west had very moderate increases, while the Border counties are stagnating. In my own area of Blanchardstown, where there are two Ministers, since December 2014, some 59 people have come off the live register, and, if we go by the national figures, 15 of them will have been put onto labour activation schemes. It is not a very glowing report in terms of recovery.

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