John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I know we have to start someplace and the current time is difficult but it seems that objective will be exceedingly difficult to achieve. Nonetheless, we have to set objectives.

The stabilisation fund the Government introduced has had some success and was a good development, from the Government's point of view. I was interested at the time we had the last discussion in this House to note that Senators on the Opposition side raised a number of strategies. The Minister of State referred to the corporation tax rate of 12.5%. It would be a controversial proposal to suggest it could be reduced further but at this juncture every item should be up for discussion. We have seen the past how significant reductions, such as the halving of capital gains tax, led to greater tax returns. There may be a case to be made to our fellow members of the European Union, some of whom have much lower corporation tax rates, that we should examine that figure. A reduction in it might attract more investment into the economy.

The Minister spoke about the level of investment made by foreign companies in Ireland and referred to €7 billion in payroll and €19 billion overall. The figures are significant and cannot be ignored. However, at times I get a sense of unreality from the Government's statistics and figures. The Minister of State referred to the IDA and its efforts to attract investment into the country but even the most optimistic of forecasters do not suggest that we will see significant decreases in unemployment over the next 12 months, yet the Minister of State did not seem to acknowledge that anywhere in his contribution today. I do not believe for a moment that job creation is at the heart of Government policy and I have not seen any evidence of where it is at the heart of Government policy.

In his concluding remarks the Minster of State spoke about how the Government had taken measures to stabilise the public finances, which it has. Could it also have fixed the banking system? It has not done so. The Minister of State referred to the importance of banking and we have had those debates in the House. I spoke about it on my local radio station recently and I still meet people in my constituency who cannot get access to credit. All the while we spend billions of euros on Anglo Irish Bank which the Government now acknowledge will never be a proper bank again. It is very difficult and there should be some level of acknowledgement that the strategy drawn up at the time by Deputy Richard Bruton, while difficult to explain and understand, was a strategy which explained the merits of the good bank and bad bank policy. It is clear that what he said at the time in regard to the establishment of a good bank was what the Government should have done. I hope we will not live to regret that his advice was ignored at that crucial juncture.

There also needs to be some immediate action by Government on unemployment. Unemployment is a personal disaster for every individual and family where unemployment has occurred. There is a serious danger that we will have another lost generation of Irish people who have to leave the country because of economic circumstances. After the Celtic tiger we should not have arrived at this juncture, where we have to export people again.

I do not get a sense of a medium term plan from the Government in regard to investment in infrastructure, broadband and other areas mentioned today at the meeting of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Investment in education, access to training and the fact that so many people who want to get back into education and improve their skills are having difficulty in getting the basic information on their entitlements are important matters. I am sure the Minister of State deals with this on a regular basis. Some 90,000 people under the age of 25 are unemployment. One third of all men under the age of 25 who are of employment age are not working. Something must be done immediately by the Government to improve their job prospects. Deputy Leo Varadkar recently produced a document for Fine Gael on youth unemployment. I do not get a sense from Government that this issue is being taken seriously.

Our unemployment rate increased at a greater rate than the European average in the last quarter. We are now third behind Spain and Slovakia in terms of our unemployment rate which is reaching almost 14%, which is nearly as bad as it was at the height of the doom and gloom of the 1980s here. It is something most people thought they had left behind. It is coupled with the fact that there is huge emigration, not just of Irish people but of people who came here in the good times to work and are now returning home or going to other places to work. The figures, while stark and shocking, are being distorted by the fact that so many people are leaving. The figures are much worse than the CSO statistics suggest. We should hold regular debates on employment strategies, perhaps on a weekly basis, not only between now and the summer recess but also when we return in the autumn. This is the single biggest issue the country faces and we have to put our heads together to find ways of getting people back to work.