Michael Mullins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join Senators in extending good wishes to Nelson Mandela on his 95th birthday. As was said, he is the inspirational world leader of our time. Many leaders of the strong nations of the world would do well to model their behaviour and actions on his as they struggle to find peace in the troubled parts of the world.

I welcome the renewed efforts by the Taoiseach to reduce unemployment levels. I understand he will unveil a plan today to get 75,000 off the live register by 2015. We regularly speak in this House about the totally unacceptable levels of unemployment, even though some progress has been made in the past 12 months. We need to give people hope and look at all aspects of the economy to see how we can assist it in reaching its job creation potential. I hope the forthcoming budget will be innovative and geared towards helping the creation of badly needed employment, in particular in small businesses and throughout the retail sector.

We need to see the construction sector return to sustainable levels. I very much welcome the fact that the Construction Contracts Bill has been passed by Dáil Éireann and pay particular tribute to our colleague, Senator Feargal Quinn, for his work on that Bill. We have seen a drop of 200,000 people employed in the construction sector in recent years and badly need to rebuild trust in that sector, in particular for small contractors and small business people involved in it. In complimenting Senator Feargal Quinn, I hope this will be the start of a gradual return to sustainable economic levels in the construction sector and that many of the Government-sponsored projects, in particular the building of schools and other infrastructural protects, will be of significant benefit to many of the small contractors who lost out significantly as a result of, and whose livelihood's were ruined by, ruthless operators. Let us ensure this never happens again and that we get the construction sector back to sustainable levels.