Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

As I stated, I will be happy to return to the Seanad to advise on this measure's progress. Obviously however, the package's progress will be reflected in general levels of economic activity. For instance, Ireland has a very high level of savings at present. People are paying down debt, are worried about their levels of indebtedness and are saving because they may be nervous about the future of their employment, business or salary levels. Ireland needs a return of consumer confidence, whereby consumers would resume spending, for instance, on home maintenance and investment through upgrades and insulation related refurbishment and so on. The Government's jobs initiative is designed to cover many such areas. I refer to measures such as encouraging people to retrofit and insulate their houses, the measures in this Bill to reduce PRSI in respect of people in receipt of €356 per week or less and the restoration of the minimum wage, which entails the restoration of a full euro per hour, as well as those put forward by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, to reduce the lower rate of VAT in respect of tourism in particular and personal services such as hairdressing. It would be reasonable to expect that businesses which will benefit from the VAT reduction should be able to show how that has carried through into their pricing structures.

There certainly is a strong feelgood factor associated with seeing even a small price reduction for a service, given all the salary reductions suffered by those who are in and have remained in employment. It is often forgotten in this recession that there are significant numbers of people whose income, while affected, remains very large. Nevertheless, those people are not confident about spending, even though they can afford to do so. One indicator in this regard is evident on Grafton Street. Unlike a few years ago, when one might bump into people carrying two or three bags, were one to walk along Grafton Street today to see how many shopping bags people - women in particular - are carrying, in many cases it would be none at all and in other cases just one bag. This marks a great change from the position a couple of years ago and is related to confidence about spending.

Moreover, there are areas in which spending on, for instance, retrofitting or insulating houses will save money and reduce our carbon footprint. Such spending is not simply for the purpose of conspicuous consumption but makes much economic sense. It is clear, however, that people must build up their confidence levels about the economy's recovery and, in this respect, if they are listening to this debate, the ECB-IMF-EU troika also could be of particular assistance. However, I will monitor this issue closely.

From a social protection perspective, the biggest problem facing the economy at present is that increasing numbers of people, younger men in particular, are entering long-term unemployment. I refer to those men who had been working highly successfully and hard in the construction industry. While they had been enjoying it and had been deriving good wages from it, the construction sector has died away and will not be returning to its previous levels for a very long time. Current unemployment statistics indicate that large numbers of people are on short working hours or are engaged in part-time work of two or three days per week. In addition, a huge number of people and young men in particular are entering long-term unemployment. These measures are designed to stimulate and when consumers feel more confident about spending and employers feel more confident that consumers have started to spend, this is generally when an economy will see a return to strong retention of employment followed by growth in employment. This is what the measures in this Bill and the Government's overall jobs incentive package are designed to achieve.