I move:
That Dáil Éireann deplores the failure of the Government to achieve the promised reduction in the number of jobless, especially among young people, or to produce any plan in this regard.
If the only matter before the House tonight were the latter part of the Government amendment I would be seeking the leave of the House to move that amendment for them because I have confidence in the ability of the Government to produce a plan for reducing the number of jobless. I am sure they have that ability and I am sure they will produce a plan, but that plan I expect to see—and the House can, perhaps, make what is nowadays called a benchmark in regard to my guess—around the month of May 1981. That is more or less when I expect to see their plan, shortly before the next general election, and I have no doubt whatsoever as to their ability and their firm intention to produce such a plan around that date.
If that was all there was at issue between the parties this evening, I would be over there shoulder to shoulder with the Minister for Labour. I am certain that that plan will emerge and that it will be introduced to the public with as much professional advertising expertise as we saw deployed last May and June but we will be waiting another four years for it. That is why I take leave to reject the sense of their amendment and proceed with proposing this motion.
No one in this House—so far as the House can be said to be in session with this very small attendance on what was supposed to be a crucial issue for the nation and its future—will be amazed or in a mood of contradiction if I remind the House that the main plank of the Government's election platform was the reduction of unemployment. At the time we entered the Common Market in 1973, and when the terms of our entry were presented to the people—essentially not materially but procedurally in referendum form in 1972—we had the highest unemployment rate of the nine countries involved by a mile. In other words, if I can attempt to shoot down these myths as they arise, the idea that relatively high unemployment is something which has only recently emerged is false. We had very high unemployment by comparison with most of the EEC countries before we joined. Within a year of our entry we were hit by the oil crisis and by an international recession which followed on that crisis and these figures rose and now are not far short of 10 per cent. These figures are naturally of concern to everybody.
The Minister's party were nationally and tactically right in concentrating on these figures in planning their election strategy. Where they were wrong and deceitful and where the people will have no reason to thank them, and where I hope for political reasons— though I intend nothing personal in saying so—the vengeance of the people will catch up on them, was in promising that somewhere in their bosoms there resided the formula for curing this disease which had shown very strong symptoms before the country joined the EEC.
That was the main plank to which the Government pinned their hopes. The people elected them. I have never whinged about it. I did not whinge about it when I was put out of office, although I had only enjoyed my office for a matter of six weeks. I put that behind me, I can tell the House in honesty, within a quarter of an hour, if not less. If you are in politics you must be as willing to be out as to be in, otherwise it is not the right game for you. When I observe that these were the objectives to which the Minister's party committed themselves I feel entitled, without being asked to submit to jibes about sour grapes, to, as they say in the public sector, monitor the progress of the Government towards achieving these objectives— God knows what we were all doing in the days before somebody dug up the word "monitor". When I was a child "monitor" was an old fashioned battleship—and we are entitled to relate the progress, or lack of it, to the specific weapons which the Government advertised in 1977 as being the means by which they proposed to deal with unemployment.
Let me remind the House: I was here at Question Time today and so was the Ceann Comhairle, but that is water under the bridge, and so were many other Deputies. The Taoiseach sat here for the entire hour, a most unusual performance for him. He is the most important man in the country and his time is valuable. When I was Parliamentary Secretary to his predecessor I spent a lot of my time trying to save my boss's time. The Taoiseach thought fit to sit here for a full hour today, even after his own questions had concluded, to monitor the progress of his Government and their underlings—the junior Ministers —in dealing with a few harmless questions put down by my colleagues and myself. One of these questions to which I found it impossible to get an answer was how many people are out of work at the moment. I asked that question both in relation to the current live register figures and the figures of last May and June which were not accepted by Fianna Fáil. The figures last May were 109,000 falling in June to 108,000-odd. Those figures were bunkum. They did not exist. What 108,000 or 109,000 was a question that people were being asked. They were told it was 160,000. Now the story is different because we were beaten and they won. Now the question is, what 160,000?
As spokesman for Industry, Commerce and Energy I am finding it impossible to get anyone on the far side to say in plain English or Irish, if they are able for it, that there were 160,000 unemployed here at a time when the live register said 108,000 and to draw the childish inference from that that if there is that differential of 52,000 we are now entitled to add the same differential to the current live register figures and produce a total of 164,000. I put this question as well as I could, through the barrage which was being put up against me from various parts of the House, to the Minister who was answering the questions and the Taoiseach condescended to interject that I was not comparing like with like. Even the Taoiseach did not think it beneath him to intervene on this point and to remind the House that this was only the spring and that June, the time I was first speaking about, had been high summer. He did not scorn to stay here, when he might have been doing something more important or resting himself, which is also important for a Taoiseach, in order to judge the issue I was trying to raise in a clear form. That was not beneath him.
