Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Cathaoirleach well on his trip on Monday. I wish him Godspeed. Today, the Central Statistics Office announced that the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.8% in April, when it was 7.5% in April 2021. We have 129,500 people unemployed in this country. In her Bill, Senator Sherlock speaks about the whole issue of flexible working and the need for flexibility in working. In reading a piece of the Bill and listening to her contribution this morning, I noticed that the one group she did not talk about at all - and if I am wrong, I am open to correction - was the employers. We need employers. We have people crying out for staff in shops and the hospitality sector. Last week, I raised the issue of Ukrainian people who want to take up work but who are told that, if they work more than 20 hours, they will lose their benefits. Let us have a real debate on work and on what it means in this Republic. I say that as a former member of a trade union who is for the rights of workers and who is not in any way against them. Let us have a real debate about what work means and about what kind of a State we want to have. It is about time we did.

My second request for the Leader is to ask the Minister, Deputy Harris, to come to the House for a debate on the new plan for higher education. I welcome his unveiling of the plan yesterday, which will provide a sustainable model for funding higher education in the future. I was amused at Senator Cassells bemoaning a lost decade on the Order of Business yesterday. I remember his own party being in government for a decade, when the country went into freefall, but we will not go back to that time, when Deputy Micheál Martin was a Minister in a government that sunk the country. We will not go back there but it is important.