Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I join with those who have thanked our Sinn Féin colleagues for putting down this motion, as it is very important that we discuss these matters. Our problem is that we have an "insider-outsider" labour market and it is all designed to protect those with jobs. The people outside have borne the burden, with 143,000 people under 25 emigrating in the last four years. We would be in Greece's position if that emigration had not happened. We are locked into a fixed exchange rate with Germany, along with Greece and Spain, and I do not see Europe as the solution to this either. The euro is a fundamentally flawed concept and countries like ours are bearing the burden. Why did we sleepwalk into the currency nine or ten years ago? Such questions must be asked as we are now having an internal devaluation, which means marginalised people in the labour force are bearing the burden.

My time is limited. On page 37 of the Book of Estimates from the Taoiseach's Department, there is an indication that the number of staff went down by 7% and the wage bill went up by 2%; that amounts to 9% per head extra for the people in the Taoiseach's office. There was a similar pattern in the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, where the wage bill went down by 3% and the number of people working there went down by 8%, which is a 5% real increase. In the health Department, staff numbers decreased by 4.7% but salaries have increased by 5%, which is a real increase of between 9% and 10%. That is what social partnership and benchmarking achieved. It gave us the most expensive people in jobs and excluded all the others, who were priced out of the labour market.

I welcome the Minister of State but he must reaffirm the reform agenda. We are approximately half way through the term of the Oireachtas and all the reforms in the manifestos have not been implemented in the Taoiseach's Department, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation or in health. The IMF has been particularly critical of the health sector. We do not yet have proper banks because of the legacy of bad capital appraisal, benchmarking, social partnership and the insider-outsider labour market. All of these problems are being borne by young people. We should reform and stop the platitudes that we might have a few shillings to throw at young people after we have destroyed so much of the economy because of misguided policies.

This Government badly needs to create a Government economics service to ensure we run many policies far better. We must tidy up the absolute destruction that bad economic policies have brought about. The process is still geared to giving much money to people in jobs, particularly in Departments, although I am sure if we went through the Estimates for 2013, we could see it happened across the board. We do not have a value for money culture and the burden is being borne by people outside.

Senator Conway and others have mentioned tourism but Oireachtas research has shown that Ireland is increasingly being perceived increasingly as bad value for money. The tourism sector must bear on its shoulders the excess costs we have spoken about and we have an horrendous sheltered sector that makes life in the unsheltered sector of the Irish economy so difficult. The results have been mass emigration and unemployment.