Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support the call of my colleague, Senator Marc MacSharry, for the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, to come before the House to account for the correspondence to which he referred. As our party's social protection spokesperson, I have raised the issue on several occasions without success. I was not able to get even the most minimal response on how much it would cost to administer the €100 conservation grant. It was obvious that there was something going on within the Department that we were not being made aware of. It reminded me of the former Irish football manager Giovanni Trapattoni who referred, using some strangled language after a match, to the cat being in the bag. The cat is out of the bag on this issue and it shows the half-baked nature of the initiatives forced on the Government in the latter part of last year as a result of universal public protest.

In the light of further job losses in Monaghan with the imminent closure of the Bose plant which will have a devastating impact beyond the county's borders, the issue of job losses at the former MBNA plant has not gone away.

It seems to me that the Government thinks the matter has gone away.

Some 160 jobs were lost immediately before Christmas which has had, and continues to have, a devastating effect on the local community and far beyond the confines of Carrick-on-Shannon. The MBNA plant was a major job creation facility that employed more than 1,100 people at its peak who came from several counties of the north west and the midlands. In recent weeks I keep asking myself how those families feel. They must feel let down by this Government that over the past number of months has continued to spin the notion that there are more and more jobs. These people have lost their jobs but, due to their location in County Leitrim, there is no realistic prospect that the jobs will be replaced. It is particularly sad that these were not ordinary jobs. They were jobs of a particular expertise in the financial sector. Over the past number of years the Government has focused a great deal on providing jobs in the financial sector in the larger cities. In Carrick-on-Shannon there is a dedicated and committed workforce which has a great deal of expertise. The longer this issue goes on, without any possibility of replacement jobs, the greater chance such expertise will be lost to the four winds.

Perhaps the Leader will indicate when the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation will come before the House for a debate. It would afford us an opportunity to question him on his jobs strategy. Statistics indicate that more jobs have been created outside of the Dublin region than in Dublin itself but, at the same time, parts of the country, such as my own and that of the Leader's region in the south east, that has not benefited from the upturn that we have been told is happening in the economy. The people who lost their jobs in Carrick-on-Shannon have not experienced an upturn. They are faced with more financial challenges, bills, debts and figuring out where to find the next few bob in order to put food on the table.