Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. It is impressive to see the amount of work that has been done and the effort made. Some of what we have heard of today is already taking place in many ways. The Minister of State has heard me speak on this issue before because I said something similar to him perhaps two years ago. The point I want to make is that the creation of jobs by Government is not the way to go. We must find a way so that, if jobs are to be created, it would be because there is a need for them.

I am not normally a supporter of Sinn Féin but I point out that Sinn Féin means "we ourselves". I believe the answer is much more independent creation of jobs by individuals themselves. There is an opportunity in this regard. I told the story some years ago of being on a partnership committee with the objective to create jobs in the particular area I was located. I went to the committee full of enthusiasm for the sort of work we needed to do. We needed our windows cleaned but we could not get somebody in the area to clean them. We needed somebody to supply us with vegetables and jam if we could get these supplied locally. When I went to the meeting, I found that in all cases the committee members wanted to send somebody to Dublin to get the Government, the IDA, FÁS or some other body to come down and do what they could for us.

We have to encourage entrepreneurship and we have to believe that people can create jobs themselves. There are opportunities to do this. In that case, I know a young man who decided, when he heard me make the point about cleaning windows, to set up a window cleaning business, which he then sold on at the end of the year. This shows the potential to create jobs.

I fear there has not been recognition that jobs in distribution are real jobs. It was only last week when we saw Hughes & Hughes and a fashion company go out of business that we began to realise there is a recognition that distribution is the creation of real, permanent jobs and that it is possible to do that, although only if the businesses are successful. In the past, the situation was such that jobs were only regarded as jobs if they were manufacturing some product. In fact, those of us in distribution were regarded almost as parasites.

For example, when I finished studying commerce in university, some years later I met my professor, the dean of the faculty of commerce, in one of my supermarkets. I was in my 20s at the time and as he did not recognise me, I introduced myself to him and he asked what I was doing there. When I said I was working there, he did not realise it was my own shop, and he said it was wonderful that one of his students was actually working in business. For the vast majority in those days, the 1960s, when a person finished university, it was supposed he or she went on to become either a teacher, an accountant or do some other job but not to create a job himself or herself.

I encourage people to realise there is a need and an opportunity for business. To a certain extent, if we talk ourselves into assuming that somebody else will create a job, and ask why somebody does not create a job for us, then it will not happen. The Government has to make it more attractive. We have to remove the barriers to jobs.

Let me take one example of this. Dr. Don Thornhill of the National Competitiveness Council was referred to earlier by Senator Mary White. We need to be more competitive. What can the State do about this? There are some steps it can take. One of the arguments that has been made by the retail sector is that something can be done to avoid the upward rent reviews that are taking place. I can understand somebody who has signed up to pay rent objecting to the fact that this rent is now too high, but if they signed up for the rent, they will have to negotiate with the landlord, who is not likely to change it. However, if an upward rent review is stapled into legislation, that is wrong and does not stand up. I know the Government is taking some action in this regard but it has a long way to go before all the barriers are removed.

Let me deal with one other barrier. I firmly believe the minimum wage is a barrier. We have the second highest minimum wage in Europe, to the best of my knowledge, and, while we want to be competitive, some jobs do not exist at that minimum wage. We can say this is outrageous and that we should be not be paying somebody as little as that, but paying a minimum wage which is a multiple of what it is in other parts of Europe makes us uncompetitive in many ways. Jobs are more important than income. If somebody does not want to work at that rate, they do not have to do so, but if we have a minimum wage that states we must pay this particular rate, and the job does not exist at that rate, it is up to the State to do something about this.

I mentioned some time back that the State of Colorado had reduced its minimum wage recently. It did this because that wage was linked to inflation; therefore, when deflation occurred, as it has been occurring here, it automatically reduced. That does not apply here and, while there are a number of jobs that could exist, they do not exist due to our minimum rate.

I stress that I am not looking for the Government to create jobs. I was chairman of a hospital board in the 1970s. We used to get a letter every month with regard to how many jobs we had managed to create in the hospital and whether we had taken on more nurses, porters and so on. That is exactly what got us into difficulty. We created costs which were far too high and which made the State uneconomical because we were creating jobs which were not necessarily needed. It is not a question of encouraging the State to create jobs.

What we have to do is recognise that if we are going to create jobs, most will come from the State removing barriers to enable entrepreneurs to start businesses and to create those jobs. They will not necessarily be big factories or big employers. There will be hundreds of jobs in small, independent operations run by entrepreneurs. We must recognise that the opportunity for jobs does not come about solely from manufacturing products; it also comes about from distribution. When a shopping centre opens, if it can be made to succeed, that will create jobs in distribution and all of the other areas involved.

To add to that point, while we are blaming the banks for recent events, the banks point out that if a retailer or anybody else has a good idea which can be successful, they are anxious to lend. What they are not anxious to do is to lend to somebody who does not have a concept that can make itself pay. Therefore, we must be able to make that case. If we make that case, we can succeed. I urge the Government to work towards removing barriers to make entrepreneurship much more likely to create jobs.