Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

It may be 93,000 this year, which is probably the highest. In 1996 and 1997, however, an additional 50,000 jobs were created, which was the start of the economic surge we have witnessed over the past number of years. When the current Taoiseach was Minister for Finance, he presided over the highest interest rates in the history of the State. As a businessperson, I remember paying 23% and 24% interest, although we currently have low interest rates. At that time, however, there was pressure on the former Minister from the Opposition to devalue so that interest rates would decrease. It took him a considerable period to do so and a certain amount of damage was done to the country in 1993 due to the delay in taking the correct decision.

I welcome the Minister of State's speech but I am worried about the BMW region. The Minister of State said, quite rightly, that some 461,500 jobs have been created since 1997. In addition, the number of women in the workforce has increased by 39% in that period. In the BMW region, however, there has been an increase of only 6% — some 26,000 jobs since 1997. We can go back to 1997 if the Minister of State so wishes.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed an underspend of €200 million in the BMW region. It is disgraceful to think that while almost 500,000 jobs have been created in the economy since 1997, only 26,000 of them were in counties Clare, Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal, Longford, Westmeath, Laois, Offaly and Louth. That represents less than 2,000 jobs per county created by the Government that claims to have done so much for the country since 1997. We all know about the jobs that have been lost in County Donegal in recent years.

Hardly a single job has been created in my own county of Mayo since 1997 when Deputy Enda Kenny, the leader of Fine Gael, was Minister for Sport and Tourism. We can see what the current Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Deputy O'Donoghue, has done. He does not have an idea. No anglers are coming to the country despite the fact that we have the finest rivers and lakes in Europe. English anglers have boycotted the country this year and therefore I must treat the Minister of State's speech with a fair degree of scepticism. While the outlook for the country is great, there is no regional balance, particularly in the BMW region. It has all been spelled out for us today.

Yesterday, we heard all the bluff about the Atlantic corridor but no costings, good or bad, were included in the plan. We do not know whether that corridor will comprise a single or dual-carriageway system, nor do we know how much of that work has been carried out already. Some parts of that road have already been completed, yet the Minister for Transport gave the impression yesterday that a new route was being created from Derry to Cork and Waterford.