Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail)

We on this side of the House welcome any attempt to deal with unemployment. It is welcome that at the very least the Government has thought about and acted on jobs, even if we disagree with some of the things it is doing. It is welcome that the focus in the Seanad, Dáil and Bill is on jobs.

The jobs initiative, which was previously called the jobs budget, falls well short of what was promised by the parties before the election and what is required for the economy and for those who are unemployed. It is critical that we are not the bearers of false hope to people that there will be a radical change in unemployment levels. We on this side of the House believe fundamentally that the pension levy, which targets middle income earners, targets the ordinary working people and excludes the very wealthy, such as the FitzPatricks and Fingletons, charges which were laid against us during the last Government. If the Government believes we should not exclude very wealthy people with approved retirement funds it must vote against the Bill which is socially unjust and divisive. It is targeting the ordinary people of Ireland. Those who are paying into PRSAs are ordinary workers, not the wealthy.

Election promises were made to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. There was even a five-point plan which promised benefits for pension savers. It accused us of obliterating middle-income earners and pensioners. There was no mention of any contribution from funds. All they talked about were ministerial pensions and I agree that is an issue which badly needs to be addressed. I suffered electorally because of the ministerial pensions issue, but this legislation does nothing whatsoever about that.

Some of the Bill's measures are welcome. The Acting Chairman was generous in dealing with the content of a Labour Party Senator's speech, but I hope that will not set a precedent because it was a totally unrelated discussion about the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, MABS. It is important to keep to the issues in the Bill, which should be the precedent in future for Government parties in dealing with difficult issues.

While the research and development tax credit is a good idea, the Minister of State is in no position to tell us what jobs will result from it. We hope, however, that it will stimulate activity in that regard.

I agree with the VAT reduction but why is it confined to what are essentially luxury goods? The reduction may create jobs in the tourism sector, which is to be welcomed, but why are newspapers included in the VAT cut? It leads one to question the motivation behind that move. Newspapers do not do much for the tourism industry in particular. In general, as we have seen, they have been ruthless enough with some of their staff. I wonder whether they deserve a VAT reduction and if they will pass it on to the cover price. Newspaper prices seem to rise all the time, but I have not seen any provision in the legislation to insist that the VAT reduction should be passed on to those buying newspapers. We are giving this tax break to these people, although most of our newspaper industry is multinational at this stage. There are very few indigenous newspaper companies creating local jobs. They are all centralising their staff in Dublin, while sacking other staff. Many of the sub-editing of Irish newspapers is now carried out abroad. Nonetheless we are including these companies in the VAT reduction, while not including poor, marginalised and ordinary families who must face the cost of household fuels, which also have a 13.5% VAT rate. The Minister of State may say she cannot do that and state the reasons, but if it can be done for newspaper barons, it can be done for ordinary families.

The pension levy is called a stamp duty. One always needed a document for the stamp duty to be chargeable and paid, so they invented a document in this case, which is a mechanism. I note that Mr. Eddie Hobbs said there was no legal way of charging this amount, but the Government has done it pretty effectively by inventing a document which is chargeable to stamp duty. As Senator Clune said, money has to be found somewhere, but I hope that is not the Government's attitude. The Government is in no position to tell us how many jobs will be created, so it should not keep raiding various funds to try to come up with something.

In passing this Bill, the inclination is to have some good news on Friday. Instead of having a good news story on Friday after the passage of this Bill, we should have a good news story in the autumn when unemployment falls as a result of this measure. If that happens, I will congratulate the Minister.

The Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Brian Hayes, described as a canard the point that the Pensions Board had not been consulted. Meanwhile, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, told the Dáil: "There was no formal consultation by me or by my Department with the Pensions Board in advance of the Government's decision to introduce the pension levy to fund the jobs initiative". I will leave the words of the Minister for Finance to contradict those of the Minister of State.

I am appealing to those Senators who believe it is unjust to leave out approved retirement funds - no matter what the arguments are - for the wealthiest in society, to vote against this Bill. The wealthiest include some of the people who caused the problems which prompted this legislation. I urge Senators to vote against the Bill on Second Stage and on Committee Stage.