Private Members' Business. - Unemployment and Emigration: Motion (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (24th Dáil) – Wednesday, 12 Nov 1986

Private Members' Business. - Unemployment and Emigration: Motion (Resumed).

The following motion was moved by Deputy Lyons on Tuesday, 11 November 1986:

"That Dáil Éireann condemns the Government's failure to arrest the continuing rise in unemployment and emigration and calls for urgent action by the Government to deal with the present crisis."

Debate resumed on amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "that" and substitute the following:

"Dáil Éireann supports the Government's policies to promote the growth of employment and intensify the fight against unemployment and recognises that an effective response to the persistence of large-scale unemployment throughout the European Community requires stronger action and closer co-operation on the part of all Member States."

—(Minister for Labour.)

Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Mr. F. O'Brien)

By agreement, and notwithstanding anything in Standing Orders, Members shall be called in Private Members' time as follows: 7 p.m. to 7.08 p.m. a Fianna Fáil speaker; 7.08 p.m. to 7.12 p.m. a Progressive Democrat speaker; 7.12 p.m. to 7.40 p.m. a Government speaker; 7.40 p.m. to 7.55 p.m. a Fianna Fáil speaker; 7.55 p.m. to 8.10 p.m. a Fianna Fáil speaker; 8.10 p.m. to 8.15 p.m. a Government speaker and 8.15 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. a Fianna Fáil speaker.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Mr. Browne

Last night I had the pleasure of listening to the Minister, Deputy Noonan, read his speech and give his ideas and suggestions on what is or is not happening in this country. One could not help wondering if he was talking about Ireland and the problems facing it in relation to unemployment. He seemed to think that everything in that respect was all right and that there were very few problems. Some of his suggestions and ideas put forward were very slack and do not deserve mention. I hope the Minister is here tonight, Deputy Quinn, will be more definite and more concrete in his suggestions and ideas on the serious problem of unemployment.

I come from a county that has possibly the highest unemployment rate in the country, County Wexford. We have something like a 20 or 21 per cent unemployment rate and the national average is 17½ per cent. There were 7,500 people on the live register at the end of September. If one added the 2,000 people who have emigrated from that county in the past year and those who are not on the live register because they are too young to sign, or cannot get money at the exchange because their parents are working and so forth, the actual figure would be somewhere in the region of 11,000. Compare that with 1982 when the figure was 6,500 to 7,000. Wexford is in a crisis because of unemployment. Despite the best efforts of the Government and the Minister, Deputy Quinn, who has had plenty of visits to that county, perhaps some of which he enjoyed, the problems continue to escalate. Factory after factory has closed down but I am not going to name them here tonight. As a result that area is demoralised and the people feel abandoned by the Coalition Government.

The commitment of the IDA must be questioned. The Waterford regional area of the IDA has been losing out to the rest of the country. With regard to advance factories, a blanket decision was taken some time ago not to build any more advance factories because of the space available all over the country. I would point out tonight that that decision, which obviously had the backing of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, was not a valid decision with regard to County Wexford, to Enniscorthy, Gorey and New Ross, where there are no advance factories. If one has not an advance factory, one cannot compete with the rest of the country. I appreciate there is a lot of idle space in advance factories in other counties, but I ask the Minister to do what he has done in Arklow, which is to build an advance factory, because of this very serious unemployment situation in Wexford.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce in a letter today to me gave the reason for making a special case for Arklow and Wicklow as being their high unemployment problem, but Wexford has that problem on an even worse scale. I ask the Minister to give some commitment tonight and find some way of getting around that problem in the interests of the unemployed people in Wolfe Tone Villas, in the Liam Mellowes area and in other areas where there are 60 per cent and 70 per cent unemployed. They do not accept an advance factory is not needed because there is plenty of space in Dublin; they want one for their own county. The whole policy of the IDA must be looked at with regard to a total commitment to the south-east region. We are losing out seriously in that area.

Unemployment is a serious problem throughout the whole country and there are figures of approximately 70,000 young people unemployed. If one adds in the 25,000 on training schemes and the 30,000 who have emigrated over the past year, one is talking about possibly 120,000 young unemployed people. Many more young people are being forced to beg for the dole because of the social welfare system. If their parents are working they are told they are entitled to £1, £5 or £6 per week which means a loss of dignity, of faith and confidence. It leads to a loss of belief in the people entrusted to govern this country. As a result, many young people see no future in Ireland and take the emigrant ship at Rosslare, Dún Laoghaire or some other port for England or some other EC country, frustrated and disillusioned at not finding any work or having any hope or belief in their own country. That is not good enough for our young, well educated young people. They are talented and obviously have a role to play in developing the country in the next decade and the next century.

The Government no longer care that thousands of young people, many ill-equipped, unprepared and financially destitute, are being forced to leave the country. There are many ways in which we could look at making efforts to solve the unemployment problem. We all accept it is a major task, but our natural resources have been neglected over a long period of time. There is potential for job creation in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, fisheries, tourism and other areas of our natural resources. Unfortunately, the people out there feel that we, as politicians, are living in an ivory tower, well protected, well paid, a selected few, and that we do not care about their problems. The Government have failed for the past four years. The only solution to the problems of unemployment and of our young people is to have a general election and let the Fianna Fáil Party take over and give some hope and future to the people.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Michael Keating has four minutes.

Mr. Keating

Having four minutes concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Mr. Quinn

On a point of order, four minutes is a ridiculous length of time. I am prepared, if the House agrees, to give the Deputy an extra five minutes of my time.

Mr. Keating

I thank the Minister for his courtesy. I had not intended to go on at any great length, but I appreciate the gesture. It is very clear the continuation of our present economic policies will lead eventually to economic collapse. Despite the best efforts of many people on all sides of the House, it has not worked and that is demonstrably clear. I do not believe it is in anybody's interest for one side or the other to start abusing their opposite numbers. We all know that neither side has the monopoly of wisdom in this area. My personal view and that of my party is that the State must play a less dominant role in the economic and social life of the country. We believe it is time to control and reduce the present levels of taxation and the size of the public sector, to reduce public borrowings and drastically to lower the levels of tax which are now necessary to pay for the inordinate level of what is often poorly managed State activity.

The policy failures of the past, which transcend the length of time this Government have been in office and go back to previous days, can be summed up as a rapid and continuing rise in public spending under all recent Governments, which incidentally indicate that, although public borrowing has increased by over £16,000 million in the past seven years, unemployment nevertheless has soared by almost 150,000. Yet taxation has risen dramatically during the past decade. Today over 40 per cent of taxpayers pay above the standard rate. If our taxation system has failed to deliver more jobs to create wealth to fund Government spending or to ensure social equality, some new thinking must be devised. In the face of a situation where this Government and their predecessor allowed public spending to rise relentlessly and allowed expenditure to dictate the level of taxation, it is time for us to put our cards on the table and say we know what the problems are and what the parameters of the next budget have to be if we are to succeed.

Perhaps it would be an indication of real national leadership if an invitation were extended to the leaders of all political parties and other corporate leaders, including the trade union leaders, to sit down around a table prior to the next budget and discuss whether we could get a broad outline of agreement at least on the shape of the budget deficit and perhaps certain other elements of budgetary strategy. It would be asking too much and tempting fate to expect more detailed consultation or agreement. Perhaps we could put aside for once the rigid postures we adopt in debates in this House and say honestly that neither side has all the answers and that what we need is a sense of political agreement, that the problems are enormous, that they cannot be resolved if we are afraid of each other across the Floor and that we will need some degree of co-operation in understanding the problem and setting out the parameters within which we could work. Maybe it is a forlorn hope to expect that kind of consultation.

The total artificiality of budget day here makes it very unreal. We all flick through the back pages of the budget speech to find out what the taxation levels are. It is as if one man and the group who work with him in the Cabinet are suddenly expected to have the answers to these problems. I wonder if prior to the next budget we could have an opportunity at least to make an input and see whether we have the courage and wisdom to admit that we know we have to reduce public spending, that we have to cut taxation if we can and that we put forward some thoughts on how that might be done. We could put those cards on the table. My party have tried in a small way to do that recently. I am not saying it should be the last word in that area but we have made a start. This is the kind of approach the people need — an end to the political bickering and backbiting that goes on here too often and the beginning of some new attempt at consensus on key economic issues. If it did not work, we could at the least say we had tried. I commend that thought to the Minister and thank him for his intervention at the outset.

Minister for Labour (Mr. Quinn)

When the Opposition party put down this motion I took time in deciding the wording of the amendment which would emanate from the Government side. I would remind the House that the text of our amendment is as follows:

To delete all words after "That" and substitute the following:

As in the case of so many of our other problems on this island, if words and resolutions, rhetoric and demands for action could of themselves solve a particular problem, then we would not have unemployment. On all sides it is quite clear that unemployment has been identified as a major problem and none of the parties elected to this House has been shy or not forthcoming in putting forward proposals to deal with it. Obviously it is not in the interest of any party or group of parties in office not to implement policies which would have as their effect the reduction of unemployment. Having stated those two rather obvious things, why is it that this problem is now worse than it has ever been?

A major priority of this Government has been to halt and reverse the growth in unemployment. An unemployment crisis has been an endemic feature of our economy since the foundation of the State but especially during the past seven years — with the increase in emigration in more recent years emerging as a spin-off among certain groups. Deputy Browne referred to that fact in his speech.

The range of special interventions in the labour market which have been specifically developed by my Department within this Government in their term of office have attracted a lot of interest internationally, both within the European Community and the OECD. As far as this Government are concerned, an indispensible element of any strategy to counter unemployment must be improved co-ordination of economic policies, particularly within the EC. I have already described these intervention measures before and I will give up-to-date details later in my speech.

I want to return to the realistic world within which we have to operate. No State, least of all a small exposed and export-led economy like ours, can succeed in a "going it alone" strategy. We have recent evidence of the reality of that statement. The French economy between 1981 and 1984 had a similar experience. It is my sincerely held view that if Europe is to find its way out of its current economic predicament, if it is to provide employment for its people, then a coordinated and structured approach to economic growth and to employment creation is absolutely necessary.

We cannot rely for recovery and employment growth on any spontaneous improvement in economic performance. In recognition of that fact and of the need to devise proposals to accelerate employment growth at European level, I have joined with my Italian and United Kingdom counterparts in putting forward proposals for an action programme for employment growth within the context of the EC. The purpose of this programme is to have the battle against unemployment designated as the central issue facing the European Community. I am confident that the programme will be fully endorsed by the Council of Social Affairs Ministers in December this year.

The imperative of stronger action and closer co-operation at European level in order to create new jobs and reduce substantially the rate of unemployment is a message which seems to have passed the Opposition by. The smokescreen which the Opposition have perhaps been creating around the issue of the future development of the Community must not be allowed to obscure the real challenges that now face Ireland and the Community itself.

The prospects for strengthening the range of special labour market interventions, which this Government have already developed will in future depend greatly on how other member states channel their efforts to give priority to the struggle against unemployment within their own countries.

There is no room for complacency at a time when the total number of registered unemployed in the Community stands at about 16 million.

The reality is this: unless there is a concerted push towards more comprehensive employment policies within the Community, some of the stronger economies will continue to take refuge in modest economic growth, low inflation and the not very cheering reassurance that high unemployment has ceased to get worse. That is why in the Social Affairs Council I am currently seeking to direct priority measures to those who continue to suffer most as a direct consequence of these economic conditions.

The new Community action priorities thus include:

—improved job and training opportunities for young people through mechanisms like the Social Guarantee for Youth, already in operation here.

—Opportunities for training and retraining for the long-term unemployed similar to those successfully developed here by AnCO.

Then there were the measures to assist the establishment of self-employed and co-operative undertakings along the lines of the highly successful Enterprise Allowance Scheme — which now has dealt with just over 15,000 people who have availed of its provisions — and the community enterprise programme organised by the Youth Employment Agency. There has been the harnessing of local involvement and initiative through the kinds of projects which have been pioneered through the Social Employment Scheme and the advancement of women in non-traditional areas of employment and enterprise through equal opportunity policies.

The Opposition are so stuck in a groove that it appears, on occasion, as if they would turn their backs on the most immediate and tangible step towards securing Community resources to meet our needs in all these areas. I refer, of course, to the Single European Act. The Single European Act is an attempt, indeed a very modest one — as the debate which will follow in this House will demonstrate — to cure what has been described in other quarters as the Eurosclerosis which has impeded growth and development and effective decision-making within the Community for several years past. The Community has been left behind by its main competitors, the United States and Japan, in terms of job creation, economic growth — something that is of particular interest to the Leader of the Opposition — and technological advance. Strengthening internal economic and social cohesion to eliminate regional disparities is part and parcel of the Community's agenda for completion of the internal market by 1992 and is very relevant to Ireland.

The Single European Act is of vital importance to the success of our membership of the Community which in 1985 alone contributed, net, £900 million in the form of transfers to this country, thus supporting Irish agriculture on a massive scale as well as providing a very significant part of the resources needed for training and employment measures, especially for young people and for regional development. In this context there is a clear obligation on all political parties, and also on key interest groups such as the trade union movement, to take full account of what the Single European Act entails in their evaluation and comments on its proposed ratification. To this extent the fact that the Government will be publishing very shortly a clear and comprehensive document outlining what is contained in the Single European Act will assist that process.

Last Friday, when attending the Standing Committee on Employment within the EC, I was interested to meet and listen to representatives of the European Trade Union Conferderation who, on the central issue of unemployment within the Community, made it quite clear that they supported and were positive in their attitude to the emergence of a genuine European Community which, in the course of its development, will take account of regional differences and imbalances. The confederation representatives were critical of those who retreat back into thinking in the narrow national terms characteristic of a collection of isolated nation states. The reason we should take account of that fact — as one of the speakers in this debate said here yesterday — is that the prospects for the reduction of unemployment in this country depend on our capacity to produce, whether agricultural goods, manufacturing goods or services, and depends increasingly on our capability to sell those products into the markets of the world. The richest and most lucrative market for us is that comprised of the 320 million people contained within the twelve member states of the EC. Therefore it is absolutely essential that we not only release the internal constraints on economic development within the EC but ensure that, as of right, we have full access to those markets representing an enormous population relative to our size. Having set the context within which the prospects for a reduction of unemployment in this country must be examined, I want now to turn to the question of unemployment.

The current level of unemployment remains unacceptably high to everybody in this House and indeed the country at large. But the fact that the growth in unemployment has levelled out, that unemployment has stabilised, can no longer be ignored even by the Opposition. That is not to say that any of us should take any false comfort from that change but we are at least required to recognise that there has been a change and to take some kind of solace in respect of many workers who would otherwise have been threatened by loss of job.

Let me give the House some statistics. The rate of annual increase in unemployment has declined from 15.6 per cent in 1983 to 8.4 per cent in 1984, to 6.4 per cent in 1985. In the past year the rate of increase has fallen to 3.1 per cent. I have always been as frank as possible in this House on this matter. I should say that these figures must be set against an increase of approximately 27,000 in the labour force between April 1982 and April 1985 and against the migration figures we have as well. I shall turn to the question of emigration later in my remarks. Nevertheless, in terms of the numbers of redundancies, of the actual numbers of reductions of those people at work, there appears to be some indication that things have stopped worsening. The latest economic projections suggest that the picture will show further improvement in 1987, with both the numbers at work holding up and the unemployment rate beginning to decline.

I should like to focus on two aspects of the unemployment figures which have been the cause of most concern in recent years and on which this Government have concentrated very considerable resources, sometimes under great criticism from people outside this House and, on occasions, from people within. The two areas on which we have concentrated our resources are youth unemployment and long-term unemployment among adults. Programmes for young unemployed people have been maintained at the high levels to which they had been expanded as a result of the introduction of the youth employment levy in 1982. The result has been a major improvement in the employment position of young people, now showing in a positive way on the unemployment register. Between the emergence of the September and October figures there was a decrease of 1,589 in the number of young people registered as unemployed in this State. That is not an isolated figure; rather does it confirm the underlying trend in youth unemployment. Ireland's youth unemployment rate is now one of the lowest in the European Community despite our having, proportionately, the highest youth population of any of the member states and the constant large increases in the labour force annually — 27,000 in the last year. Now Denmark and Germany only have lower youth unemployment rates than ourselves and they have a significantly smaller youth population. This improvement is not accidental. It reflects the real contribution which the range of imaginative employment programmes have made to improving the labour market position of our young people. Similarly, with regard to the long-term unemployed, those over 35 years of age, the Social Employment Scheme and the Building on Experience AnCO programme, specifically designed and implemented to provide those people unemployed for more than one year with an opportunity to return to the dignity of working life through worthwhile employment, have been successful and are now at full capacity.

The direct action programme outlined in the recently published White Paper on Manpower Policy strenghtens this policy of responding effectively to the needs of long-term unemployed people. The direct action programme will offer the long-term unemployed referral to guidance and replacement. This is vitally important as those who have been out of work for a considerable time can become demotivated. It may be the case that they are still even trying to sell a particular skill which itself has become redundant. Depending on the outcome of the assessment and advice of placement officers, they will be offered opportunities on manpower programmes suitable to their individual needs, that is, if they cannot be assisted in getting a job straightaway.

The Social Employment Scheme, the job search programme and the direct action programme I have outlined perform one other vital function — they demonstrate that it is possible to get over the rigidities which have grown up around the social assistance system and to provide those most in need of opportunity with a real alternative to the horrible trap of being out of work in our society.

I want now to turn briefly to the issue of emigration, referred to in our amendment and also in the Fianna Fáil motion. I have referred already to emigration as being linked to the high level of unemployment. Once again, for the benefit of the House, I shall return to the question of youth emigration which warrants so much attention. The bulk of that emigration is not concentrated among the very young school leavers regardless of all the anecdotal evidence trotted out by various people in support of that contention. Successive surveys of school leavers have failed to show any substantial increase in the proportion of school leavers living abroad one year after leaving school. For example, in 1980, 2.2 per cent of the 1979 school leavers had emigrated while in 1985, 2.9 per cent of the 1984 leavers had emigrated. Preliminary work on the returns relating to this year's survey suggests that there may even be an improvement, in other words a slight reduction, in the position of those who left school in 1985. The surveys are available in the Library of the House. I am quoting statistics that are a matter of public record.

The importance of education to economic and employment growth and in preparing young people for the world of work cannot be over emphasised. The data on the employment destination of Irish graduates in recent years bears out the well-established connections between educational credentials and job prospects. Between 1981 and 1985 the percentage of primary degree graduates obtaining employment increased from 41 per cent to 49 per cent, while those unemployed decreased from 6.4 per cent to 5.3 per cent. These figures also reflect the contribution made by graduate placement programmes developed by the Youth Employment Agency.

My concern and that of this Government is to ensure that nobody leaves Ireland seeking work in Britain or elsewhere who is either ill-prepared for the experience which they are about to undertake or ill-informed of the country to which they are travelling. Therefore, I welcome the statement issued by the Irish Roman Catholic bishops after their recent meeting in Maynooth which focussed on the problem of "unplanned emigration"— I am using their phrase. I was pleased to have the opportunity last April to address the annual conference of the bishops' commission for emigrants and to outline the practical steps being taken by the manpower agencies in response to the needs of emigrants. I announced at that time that I had directed the National Manpower Service to improve its services to young people contemplating working abroad and to actively discourage unplanned emigration.

Last week the bishops welcomed the two main initiatives developed by the National Manpower Service. The first is an information campaign involving posters, leaflets and an information pack which will be available to schools, welfare offices and manpower offices. Secondly, the National Manpower Service is organising briefing sessions to assist personnel likely to be involved in giving advice to prospective emigrants. The Bishops' Emigrants Commission has been consulted by the National Manpower Service with regard to these developments.

These initiatives will continue to be developed in the restructuring of the manpower services under the new national employment and training authority. The House will have an opportunity to discuss the establishment of the authority in the context of the legislation to be enacted later this year. I welcome the support which has been given to that legislation, both today in the House and on previous occasions by the Opposition party and other parties.

I have deliberately taken the issue of emigration and honestly responded to it in a manner with which I think this House will be familiar. On previous occasions we talked about it in as factual a way as we could. I know that many individual Deputies have visited people in London and elsewhere and spoke to some of the chaplains about the problems some of the young people have encountered. Some of the problems have been difficult. There has always been in the past a certain reluctance by politicians in this country to honestly deal with the question of emigration. Instead they use it as some kind of political stick with which to beat their opponent, particularly if their opponent happens to be in office. I am quite prepared to take on the arguments that any politician on any side wishes to make on this issue. I do not think that arguments at home between feuding political parties fighting over who is responsible for emigration does anything for emigration; nor does it do anything for those who have emigrated.

Mr. Quinn

If a change of Government would solve the problems of this country there should be no problems left. We have changed Governments on every occasion since 1969. Whatever about the Deputies in the House, the people in the gallery know that the problems still remain. While you and I may solve problems for ourselves by changing who is in and out of office there is no direct correlation that the changing of the Government will necessarily change or reduce the problems.

I will finish on this note——

Mr. Haughey

The Minister is already finished.

Mr. Browne

The Minister threw in the towel a long time ago.

Mr. Quinn

The annual economic report of the European Community of which we are a member and which is the largest single market into which we sell, and which, with respect to our agriculture, is the only market effectively in real terms, as Deputy Browne of Wexford is well aware. That document, which comes out officially from the EC, says that, despite their best forecasts and the slight upturn, unemployment within the Community of the European nations will remain at 10 per cent right through the early part of the next decade. That is not what I or anybody wants but that is being forecast. We must look at the real world within which we are forced to live rather than pretending like young, inexperienced people that because we do not like the real world we can have it changed.

Some of the measures which this Government have taken, particularly in my Department, have worked, perhaps not as successfully as I would like and we have made mistakes in other areas. However, I can say tonight, despite the criticisms that have been in some of the newspapers recently, that if it was not for the measures that I took as Minister for Labour there would not be 10,000 people tonight who have a job to go to in the morning under the social employment scheme; there would not be 15,000 people who have gone through the enterprise allowance scheme and who are now working in some form of self employment, and there would not be something of the order of 46,000 young people and people over the age of 25 who tomorrow morning have a place to go to in one of the 18 training centres and community workshops around the country. If anyone from the Opposition feels that in the last four years I have been wasting money or should not have been doing those things I would like such a person to say that not just to me but to the 60-odd thousand people who tomorrow morning have something to get up for and something to go and work for.

An Ceann Comhairle

We cannot have any reaction from the gallery one way or the other.

Dr. O'Connell

The Minister for Labour is a man for whom I have a strong regard and whose ability I admire very much, but I must say without intending personal offence to the Minister that I believe he has deluded himself into thinking that the situation is normal in this country. I beg him please to call to some of the labour exchanges, the working class areas and the middle class areas to see the catastrophe and the tragedy that unemployment has brought to some households. When we hear statements like "unemployment has bottomed out" which I have heard very often from the Government in the last few years and "we are poised for recovery"— that much hackneyed phrase — what the Minister said tonight would be amusing were it not so tragic.

In tabling this motion on unemployment the Fianna Fáil Party rightly ask Dáil Éireann to condemn this Government's failure to halt the rise in unemployment. As a constructive Opposition we call on the Government to take urgent action to deal with the present crisis. Everyone will agree that a crisis it is with almost a quarter of a million people unemployed and a rate of emigration reminiscent of the fifties. It must be remembered that over 80,000 people emigrated in the last four years. That justified our leader's statements that the overall picture amounted to a national catastrophe. If you do not believe that emigration is taking place at a phenomenal rate, just call down to the American Embassy at 6 o'clock every morning and see the young people queuing up there. Our own television did not show this but BBC2 television showed the long queues of these young people going out to be exploited in America, and the Government's answer is that we must provide facilities for them in England and in other countries. That was what came across from the Minister.

On the Coalition's accession to office 170,000 people were unemployed, something which the Coalition described as a disastrous figure in their Joint Programme for Government of December 1982, page 7. They said that pending a soundly based recovery in employment based on competitiveness, emergency measures were needed to halt the rise in unemployment which had reached disastrous proportions. This sounded promising and I remember reading it at the time and saying, “Hear hear, this is very good.” The reality was different. No emergency measures were introduced and unemployment continued to spiral. By 1984 and the publication of their other document Building on Reality 1985-1987 they had clearly given up hope of solving the unemployment problem. In that document there was no mention of the disastrous unemployment levels. For some inexplicable reason that was left out. Rather we were told, and I quote from page 31; “It would be wrong to draw too pessimistic a conclusion on unemployment from the difficult experience of the past few years.” At this time the unemployment figure had climbed to 212,300. This is a classic example of Orwellian doublespeak. When Fianna Fáil were in Government the unemployment figure of 170,000 was disastrous but with the Coalition in Government and 250,000 people without jobs there is no reason to be too pessimistic.

The truth is that employment creation has ceased to be a priority of this Government. It is disturbing that those who forecast improved conditions for economic investment see no sign of substantial improvement in employment. Evidently the Government accept this view and job creation is no longer seen as synonymous with economic growth. The Government are not prepared to harness the improved economic conditions they claim will come to initiate the job creation programme, or a job creation crusade which is a proper name for what should be done, and this country needs that type of crusade above all. Rather they claim to concentrate on cultivating the conditions for economic recovery.

What good is economic recovery if it does not create jobs for the unemployed? The recent AIB report forecast increased economic activity with static high levels of unemployment. Is this what we want? If market forces will not create the jobs then the Government must do so, and most people realise that this Government will not. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that Governments do not of themselves create employment nor should they be expected to do so. As I said, jobs are not a priority of the present Government. If they were we would have a comprehensive employment plan formulated with targets for job creation.

I think that there will be areas for increased employment in the future which need to be clearly identified and the conditions for their expansion need to be developed. To do this would require great political will, something which, I am sorry to say, this Government have not got in this regard.

If jobs are not the Coalition's main economic priority, book-keeping certainly is. Remember that this is the Government who were going to phase out the current budget deficit by 1987, and they deflated the economy so much that this proved to be impossible. This is proof positive that monetarism does not work, especially in a small open economy like ours. Monetarism has been the ruination of our economy. Does anyone realise just how serious is the fact that native manufacturing industry has been wiped out by this recession? We will have to rebuild, to start from scratch, and pursuing restrictive economic policies cannot achieve this. It might not be so bad had the belt tightening produced some result, but it did not. We have had four years of belt tightening and no results. In 1982 each person in Ireland owed £1,400 to foreign banks. Today each person owes £2,500 to the banks abroad. The Government's economic policies of which they boast so much have sent many companies to the wall. Already 384 liquidations have occurred in the first six months of this year along with 58 receiverships. Therefore, production plummets and national wealth drops, leaving less money to the economy so that the Government have to borrow more to meet their spending requirements. If we have to borrow money surely it makes more sense to borrow for expansion rather than for retrenchment.

Job creation must be approached on three levels: first, the industries that can develop by a fuller utilisation of our national resources; second, the development of a high technology industry, and finally, structural changes that can be made in educational and employment practices to improve the employment situation.

It is estimated that as many as 30,000 people emigrated last year. If this continues our population will again fall and national self confidence will further decline. The main reason for this exodus of well educated young people is the spirit of hopelessness which is promoted by the philosophy and policies of this Government. The tragedy is that in order to maximise the gain from future technological developments we will need a highly skilled labour force and these are the people who are emigrating. The State having invested in the education of these people is now losing their expertise to foreign Governments.

Mr. O'Dea

Deputy Keating advised us not to take rigid postures. This problem has reached such serious proportions that it is our duty to take a very serious stand on this problem. I am sorry that neither Deputy Keating nor the Labour Party are here to hear us tonight.

It is the small things that bring home the magnitude of this problem. I can recount two incidents which occurred during the summer and which really brought home to me the seriousness of the problem. One morning last June when passing through Ballsbridge I became rigid with horror at the length of the queues of young people, the best and brightest of our young people, outside the American Embassy, queuing up to get out of Ireland to America where as Deputy O'Connell said they will in many cases be exploited and used as cheap labour. In September I walked into a hotel bar in London and half the patrons of the place knew me by my first name. I recognised many of my ex-constituents. The emigrants I met there were not unskilled workers such as the ones we exported in the forties and fifties, but highly educated young people full of ability and talent. It has been estimated that it costs between £15,000 and £25,000 to educate an undergraduate in electronic engineering. Using that figure, last year we produced £7 million worth of graduate skills in electronics and more than half of those people emigrated; about £4 million worth of expensively produced skills went abroad. Apart from the economic damage to the country we have not taken into account the trauma and personal tragedy of emigration.

The Limerick Chronicle an old established newspaper in Limerick contains a section which gives a sort of flashback to what happened perhaps ten or 20 years ago. In last night's Limerick Chronicle there was a question from the Labour Deputy for Limerick East, Mr. Stevie Coughlin in 1966, 20 years ago to the Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, TD about the increase to 35,000 in unemployment and the Taoiseach assured him that it would be brought down in the near future. Would that that we were back in those days.

The Government response to this problem is a flippant debating society response. They say unemployment has bottomed out and that the underlying trend has stabilised. The trend did not stabilise between now and last year nor between now and this time last month. When did the underlying trend begin to stabilise? The House and the country deserve a better response from the Government than this. Now the Government are concealing the unemployment figures by hiding behind statistics. The unemployed are hidden beneath a plethora of schemes, job training programmes, employment programmes, social employment schemes and many others. All these things are good in their own way but not when their main purpose is as a device for hiding the truth from the people. The other statistics which we do not have officially are emigration statistics. We managed to get our own figures which show that over 80,000 people emigrated since 1982 when this Government first took office. Apart from those hidden figures and the emigration figures, the Government admit in the publication of their own figures that unemployment is now at 18 per cent of the population and is approaching 20 per cent. The live register should be called the lie register but, even according to that register, we are approaching a figure of one in five unemployed. If Deputy Keating or any other Deputy advises us not to take a rigid stand on that I must disagree.

The Minister for Labour, Deputy Quinn, referred at great length to statistics and social employment schemes. Those schemes are merely an exercise in expensive window dressing to hide the facts and to divert attention from the problem instead of solving it in a realistic way. Do the Government intend to consign the unemployed and school leavers to the sort of sophisticated form of famine relief which they get from the schemes? Is this the answer of the Government of integrity to the problem which has grown and grown under their stewardship without any serious attempt at corrective actions? Even that most respected body, the National Economic and Social Council, have stated that those schemes are all very well in their own way but that definite economic policies are needed, orientated towards job creation and policies which will lead to the creation of real jobs, not gimmicks or short-term schemes which hide the facts.

We have waited for four years to see if the Government would recognise the problem and take realistic action. Unfortunately for everyone, especially the young people who will have to emigrate, the overwhelming evidence is that the Government have not yet grasped the reality. The speech of the Minister for Industry and Commerce Deputy Noonan, illustrate my point. He said that the problem of unemployment represents the greatest challenge facing us today. We are sick of this lip service as we have been listening to it for the past four years. We do not want any more words, we want action. We know that the greatest problem facing the country is unemployment. Those who have not attained primary certificate level know it also but we want to know what the Government's proposals are for dealing with it. We want an account of their stewardship over the past four years and their plans for the future after the years of mismanagement. The Minister went on to say that the Government are committed to contributing in every possible and rational way to a solution to the problem. He also said that he used the words "contributing to a solution" because the Government's task is to create the right environment for jobs. There is an echo of this environmental talk further on in his speech about job creation when he said that Governments of themselves do not create employment and that they should not be expected to do so but that they have a duty to create the right environment and to put in place the proper mechanisms to enable industry to prosper and to respond to the challenge of unemployment. He went on to say the Government had been unstinting in their efforts in this regard. I can hardly believe the Minister said such things.

The Minister for Finance paid lip service to the idea of creating the right environment and economic climate for industry to prosper. We heard the same thing a few minutes ago from the Minister for Labour. If imposing the highest rates of personal taxation in the civilised world, the deposit income retention tax which takes 35 per cent of the deposit interest accruing to people whose incomes are so meagre they are not even in the tax net and imposing savage rates of VAT on our most labour-intensive industries create the right environment for industry to prosper and for job creation, then words have truly lost their meaning.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce spoke about the Government's greatest achievement, the attainment of a lower rate of inflation. We want to nail this misconception once and for all. The Government cannot have it both ways. The speeches of the Minister for Labour and that of the Minister for Industry and Commerce were peppered with references to the high rate of unemployment throughout the EC. We are supposed to conclude that because there is a high rate of unemployment there the Government cannot be blamed for unemployment here. However, inflation has come down substantially to levels lower than ours throughout the EC over the past couple of years and no doubt the Government will claim credit for that.

The Minister for Labour said that inflation is expected to be 3 per cent next year. Respected economic commentators agree it will be between 3.5 per cent and 4 per cent which is the highest in the EC. The relative uncompetitiveness of Irish industry, which existed when inflation was in double figures in all EC countries, remains. The Minister for Industry and Commerce made much play on the famous industrial White Paper published in 1984 and he said that 12,000 jobs were created in 1985, presumably as a result of the policies which flowed from it. We are not fools. We are not worried about one side of a mathematical equation, we want to see the whole equation. At the beginning of 1985, according to the famous live register, unemployment stood at 204,000 people but at the end of 1985 it stood at 230,000. We are worried about these figures and we are not concerned about whether 12,000 or 120,000 jobs were created in 1985. We are also concerned at the continuing net loss in employment. During the same period, industrial employment was reduced from 319,000 to 305,000.

The Minister went on to refer to the business expansion scheme. Time does not permit me to go into it fully but anyone who has a knowledge of the subject will know that the business expansion scheme introduced by the Government is a charade and a joke. The Government have a habit of announcing schemes with a flourish of publicity, pretending they are doing something but hedging them in with so many restrictions, subclauses and restraints that they will achieve nothing. The Minister went to great lengths to point out the beneficial effects of the business expansion scheme but the statistics prove otherwise. I did not have to look for any statistics to tell me the result of that scheme because the Minister told us that to date an investment of £7.5 million has taken place under this scheme. Do the Ministers not know that £7.5 million equity investment at this stage does not even begin to solve the problems which the Government's policies have caused? The Minister went on to say that the success of the business expansion scheme cannot be measured solely in terms of statistics. Of course it suits the Minister to say that. He said that the scheme has had a very important catalytic effect in terms of focusing attention on the benefits of equity-style investment. Can the Minister tell us what that means? Are we to take the Government's response to the problem in terms of a debating society instead of getting down to solving our problems?

The whole tenor of the debate has disappointed me greatly. The Government seem to think that if they catch the Opposition out in regard to a statistic the problem will magically disappear and that they have won another victory. However, it is only a debating victory; if the Government continue in this fashion and if unemployment keeps growing then the country is on the road to disaster. The only thing which will produce a catalytic effect on the economy is a general election and a change of Government. We should have strong, single party Government that can solve the problem in a realistic way.

Minister of State at the Department of Labour (Mr. Kenny)

The Fianna Fáil motion is very broad. It seeks to condemn the Government for their failure to arrest the continuing rise in unemployment and emigration and calls for urgent Government action to deal with the present crisis. I want to say to Deputy O'Dea and to his fellow speakers on the other side of the House that I have listened with interest to this debate both inside and outside the House. Many valid points and criticisms have been made both of this and previous Governments. The emotional word "emigration" has been raised time and again. The only action that has been called for which seems to be of an urgent nature is to have a general election on the assumption that a single party Government, Fianna Fáil, would be returned to power and would set about solving all of these difficulties so that everything in the garden would be rosy. If that is the illusion that is being perpetrated on the Irish people, it is a mythical illusion; it will not happen. I listened, like many other people, when Deputy Haughey was first appointed Taoiseach, to his address to the Irish nation when he said we were living beyond our means and it was genuinely time to do something about it in a national sense. Many people expected that action would follow but it did not either on that occasion or on the second occasion when the opportunity arose.

Both Deputy Gallagher and I come from a part of the country which has been ravaged by emigration over the past five generations. It is fair to say that many people have left our shores in recent times. Some have gone to America, some have gone to the UK and some have gone to the Continent. Many of these are in a different category from those of the old style emigration of 40 to 50 years ago who left never to return. At least our educational system now allows people to avail of opportunities which were not available to their parents. If people choose to leave the country it is our responsibility, through the educational system, to see that they are properly prepared for wherever they go to. Many of the graduates I have spoken to were leaving of their own volition but intend to come back when the opportunity arises. They wish to continue to do that. It is very important that young people keep their links with this country.

Statistics have been given by the Minister for Labour with regard to the categories of young people who emigrate. It is very fair to say that this country faces an enormous challenge in the years ahead. One can ask whether this or another Government wish to continue on a day to day basis attempting to manage a practically unmanageable economy in many ways or whether we are to drift towards the next century and have the condemnation of all young people or all our future workers on the various schemes which have been put forward. These schemes have been decried by many Fianna Fáil speakers. In any one year approximately 90,000 are trained and given the opportunity on some programme or other to do something which is of benefit to themselves and which they can follow through.

On many occasions the question of the country's infrastructure has been raised. As one who must travel the length and breadth of Ireland I can say that our infrastructure has improved genuinely in the past ten years. Rural Ireland has been supplied with water and ESB schemes and roads have been improved. One hundred million pounds per year is being spent on the school building programme. The vast office blocks which were once required are no longer required because of changes in technology. Two hundred million pounds worth of reconstruction work has been generated through the grant schemes. That will go some way towards allieviating the unemployment problem in the industry.

I want to commend the Government's flexibility in their approach towards the creation of the various schemes. While they may have been decried and run down by various speakers they are a genuine attempt to provide an opportunity for young people to do something better than was available to them heretofore. While we would all like to have permanent jobs available for everybody in the morning I, like many other public representatives in this House, know the genuine gravity of the problem in dealing with young people who ask us to get them jobs in a State or semi-State body. It is not possible to do so. I want to conclude by supporting the Government amendment.

Mr. Haughey

This Coalition Government have the worst record on employment of any Government in the history of the State. They came into office with a pledge to reduce unemployment but instead after four years it is beyond anyone's worst possible expectations. The present horrendous figures for unemployment and emigration are directly attributable to the past four years of economic mismanagement. The latest official figures reveal a total of 237,000 potential workers on the live register, the highest October total on record. As winter draws in, bringing with it the inevitable seasonal layoffs in what remains of the building trade and in the tourist industry, the dole queues are likely to increase further, taking the number of those officially registered as unemployed close to the quarter million mark.

But these figures illustrate only a part of the crisis we face. For while Coalition Ministers have been implementing their high-taxation, monetarist experiments with the public finances, some 100,000 Irish citizens, many of them highly educated young graduates, have left the country so that there is hardly a family in the land which has not been affected and felt the impact and the sadness that emigration brings. It makes me inexpressibly angry to hear people attempting to claim some beneficial side to emigration, that, for instance, these people will go abroad, gain experience and knowledge and come back to benefit the Irish economy. We know that is rubbish and nonsense. The vast majority of these young people go because they have no job here or any prospect of getting a job.

In addition to those officially registered, there are another 40,000 potential workers being kept off the official live register by a range of temporary works schemes, training courses and other temporary expedients. Adding all these tens of thousands together, those who have been forced into idleness and dependence, those who have given up hope and left and those who have been diverted into those largely pointless training courses, it is clear that somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000 Irish workers have been denied employment by this incompetent Government and have thereby been removed from the productive process. The value of their contribution to national output, were they at work, would be at least £4 billion annually. Our gross national product at present is £16 billion. If those people had been given the work they are entitled to, our gross national product would be increased by one quarter and would be £20 billion today.

Nor can the Government blame the general world recession any longer. I was interested to hear the Minister for Labour mention the EC. It is true that unemployment is high all over Europe but whereas unemployment in Ireland between 1979 and 1982 grew no faster than the EC average, since 1982 it has grown twice as fast as in any other EC country even leaving emigration out of account. The combination of policies pursued by the Government has been quite lethal. We have had deflationary, high taxation policies, cuts in investment and policies leading inevitably to high interest rates. There have been no positive, developmental policies designed to increase employment but only temporary schemes designed more than anything else to manipulate the official unemployment statistics.

Far from providing the 17,000 to 20,000 additional jobs necessary to cope with the annual increase in the labour force the Government have actually eliminated between 60,000 and 70,000 jobs which were in existence when they came into office. The Government's employment policies and targets have been a disaster. They have not halted nor reversed the rise in unemployment as promised in the Joint Programme for Government. The new industrial policy announced in 1984 has been a total failure and has been quite unable to stem the industrial job losses let alone create new jobs. As a number of my colleagues have said the targets in Building on Reality bear no relation whatever to reality.

The most compelling evidence of Coalition failure is the mass exodus of young people leaving the country which is now running at at least 30,000 per year. It is my view, and all the indications are, that emigration is actually accelerating; it is getting worse by the day. Families and communities are losing young people who have lost hope of ever finding a job at home. Nearly half of the young Europeans featured in that celebrated IDA advertisement, for instance, have left the country. The massive investment the country has made in those young people is being drained away. That is the real black hole in the Irish economy.

Whatever sector of the economy one looks at, it is the same bleak picture. The flight from the land is accelerating as incomes are reduced drastically, as investment in manufacturing industry falls off and employment falls. The recession in the construction industry is unprecedented. The index of employment in firms employing more than five people has now dropped to substantially less than half what it was in mid-1981. There has even been a fall in the services sector, the one sector that was supposed to be the principal source of new employment under the new industrial policy.

However, allowing unemployment and emigration to rise has not brought any improvement in the public finances, if that was the policy, and I think it was. The national debt and the foreign debt have virtually doubled in four years and it looks as if the national debt this year will rise to over 145 per cent of our gross national product. In other words, the national debt will be about one-and-a-half times what we produce in any one year. Despite all protestations of fiscal rectitude which we are sick and tired of hearing, the current budget deficit this year is heading for an all-time record of about 9 per cent of GNP.

The most depressing feature of all is that the Government have no employment policy. Various expedients have been tried and failed. The National Development Corporation is a farce. The Cabinet Employment Task Force have done nothing and now the Youth Employment Agency is being wound up. There are no developmental policies, only recently a rush of election expenditures to bolster the fortunes of Fine Gael and Labour Deputies in marginal constituencies.

Fianna Fáil, since the foundation of the state, have steadily pursued policies of economic development. We have set out on many different occasions the positive action that is required of the Government. We have criticised again and again their bookkeeping mentality, the hostility or indifference in budget decisions to the need for enterprise and the total lack of any developmental philosophy. A Coalition at war with themselves cannot possibly produce the policies needed for economic recovery.

Even the Central Bank, which these days seems to espouse a strange kind of optimism, sees no improvement either in employment or unemployment. The latest issue of European Economy notes that over the 12 months up to June of this year the sharpest fall in industrial production has been experienced in Ireland, with a fall of 5.5 per cent. If the Government cannot or will not take urgent action to deal with this unacceptable situation, if they acknowledge that they are unable to fulfil their mandate, then they have a duty to bring that mandate back to the people for decision.

As the unemployed attempt to sort out their lives as best they can, trying to survive from week to week on inadequate incomes, they have to endure lectures from patronising Ministers even to the extent of being actually blamed for what the Government have done.

The Taoiseach recently took time off from his monotonous refrain of blaming Fianna Fáil for his own failures to turn instead to try to put the blame on to the shoulders of Irish workers. He had the temerity to claim that absenteeism was one of the main reasons why Ireland was no longer attracting foreign investment and that workers were deliberately closing down their own factories. The Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, whose specific responsibility it is to implement a policy of industrial development to provide employment, has now apparently decided that he will do nothing of the sort and that he must not be expected to provide or create employment. The young people of Ireland now know that they cannot look to this cold, calculating politician for employment opportunities.

But the real crime of the Government is not that they have let unemployment climb steadily towards a quarter of a million, nor that they have been responsible for such appalling levels of emigration. It is not even that they have consistently stood back and refused to save existing jobs nor that they have failed to grasp obvious opportunities to provide new jobs. The really serious damage they have done lies in the fact that they have taken away people's hopes and persuaded large numbers of people, unfortunately, that there is nothing that can be done about our economic problems. They radiate a negative atmosphere. They have created a mood of despair and hopelessness up and down the country. They have spread failure like a contagious disease.

If the Government had systematically set out four years ago to undermine the productive base of the economy they could not have done worse. Having devastated the building industry, leaving 50,000 building workers on the dole, they moved on to spread the dead hand into every corner of the land, leaving a trail of destruction highlighted by the failure of Irish Shipping, Verolme, Dunlop and Ford to name but a few of the most important.

Both public and private sector investment have slumped dramatically over the last four years. High-taxation policies and the failure to implement any real policy of economic development have created a climate hostile to investment and driven a large volume of the nation's capital out of the country. A complete lack of confidence in the Government's ability to control the public finances has done great damage in the financial markets and has driven up interest rates. The much heralded consumer boom has not materialised and does not look like materialising. How could there be any kind of economic revival when the savings of the people which should be available for investment have been driven out of the country by the taxation policies of the Government?

The first task of the next Government will be a psychological one. It will be a battle to restore the confidence of our people in their ability to tackle their economic problems and to succeed in overcoming them.

Fianna Fáil did that job before in the fifties. At that time an incoming Fianna Fáil Government inherited an economy which was on the floor; there was mass unemployment and emigration and the same sort of air of defeatism that prevails today. Fianna Fáil faced that challenge and with the right policies and inspired leadership led the country into a new era of economic development in the sixties. Fianna Fáil have the political determination and the experience to do that job again. We know there is an alternative to permanent mass unemployment and emigration; an alternative to a no-growth economy, rising national debt and crushing taxation.

The development of high-technology, science-based industry, of food-processing, of our natural resources, of tourism, the dismantling of elements of our tax system that are hostile to enterprise and investment or that are leading to diminishing returns, the revival of the construction industry, these are the sort of policies that the Government should be engaged in.

We bitterly regret the exodus of top graduates in electronics and electrical engineering and other professions from our country. Instead of forcing these talented people to go abroad and work for European and US multinationals, we will create the climate which encourages them to stay and satisfies their spirit of ambition here at home. At every stage we will offer a helping hand to those prepared to build, to invest and to create.

Fianna Fáil Governments have always been able to work in close co-operation and consultation with the social partners and, in particular, with the trade union movement. We were able to secure a broad consensus on the aims of economic and social policy. A commitment to the provision of employment was the central objective that enabled us to work together. The present disastrous state of the economy is due to the lack of any such national unity of purpose.

The countries that suffered least in the present recession and that have had the lowest increase in unemployment are countries where there is co-operation between the Government, the employers and the trade unions. That will be the approach of Fianna Fáil.

Given the recent performance of the Irish economy the Taoiseach, Dr. FitzGerald, could well earn the title, "Exporter of the Year". He has created a new record in the export of both capital and labour. The labour and capital drained from the Irish economy should have been available to build up the economy and narrow the gap in living standards between Ireland and our neighbours. Our task will be to bring these resources back to fund future economic growth. We shall also convince the demoralised young that their energies and skills can be used in rebuilding the Irish economy in the years ahead.

It is important to get the size and nature of the problem into perspective. We can do this, for example, by looking to the giant market of the EC. It is true we have the highest rate of unemployment in the EC at 18 per cent of the available workforce, but it is also true that we only account for a tiny 0.6 per cent of total economic output in the Community. A marginal increase in our market share of that Community would prompt an immediate and dramatic improvement in our economy and we believe that is possible and attainable.

We do not want to see our young people building up the economies of Britain, Germany and the US with their skills and abilities. Our grand ambition will be to see the 100,000 who have been driven into exile by the policies of the Coalition return to take their place in and make their contribution to an expanding Irish economy.

The Coalition have failed the central test. They have not dealt with unemployment. It has risen and risen and the figures published last Friday show that it is still rising. It is now obvious that they cannot deliver on this key issue. They have therefore, no justification of any kind for hanging on to office and should go. Even by their own monetarist philosophy, if the management does not succeed it is fired and I recommend that monetarist policy to them.

One thing is certain. When this discredited, universally disliked Government are finally driven from office and replaced by a Fianna Fáil Government with an overall majority, a message of hope will go out not just to the people at home but to New York and Boston, London, Frankfurt, Australia and many other countries around the world. The message will be that the nightmare is over, the Coalition have gone and the work of national recovery is under way.

Question put: "That amendment No. 1 be made".

The Dáil divided: Tá, 73; Níl, 68.

Tá

Allen, Bernard.
Barnes, Monica.
Barry, Myra.
Barry, Peter.
Begley, Michael.
Bell, Michael.
Birmingham, George Martin.
Bruton, John.
Bruton, Richard.
Burke, Liam.
Carey, Donal.
Cluskey, Frank.
Collins, Edward.
Conlon, John F.
Connaughton, Paul.
Coogan, Fintan.
Cooney, Patrick Mark.
Cosgrave, Liam T.
Cosgrave, Michael Joe.
Creed, Donal.
Crotty, Kieran.
Crowley, Frank.
D'Arcy, Michael.
Deasy, Martin Austin.
Desmond, Barry.
Desmond, Eileen.
Donnellan, John.
Dowling, Dick.
Doyle, Avril.
Doyle, Joe.
Dukes, Alan.
Durkan, Bernard J.
Enright, Thomas W.
Farrelly, John V.
Fennell, Nuala.
FitzGerald, Garret.
Flaherty, Mary.
Glenn, Alice.
Griffin, Brendan.
Harte, Patrick D.
Hegarty, Paddy.
Hussey, Gemma.
Kavanagh, Liam.
Kelly, John.
Kenny, Enda.
McGahon, Brendan.
McGinley, Dinny.
McLoughlin, Frank.
Manning, Maurice.
Mitchell, Gay.
Mitchell, Jim.
Molony, David.
Moynihan, Michael.
Naughten, Liam.
Noonan, Michael.
(Limerick East)
O'Brien, Fergus.
O'Brien, Willie.
O'Keeffe, Jim.
O'Leary, Michael.
O'Sullivan, Toddy.
O'Toole, Paddy.
Owen, Nora.
Pattison, Séamus.
Quinn, Ruairí.
Ryan, John.
Shatter, Alan.
Sheehan, Patrick Joseph.
Skelly, Liam.
Spring, Dick.
Taylor, Mervyn.
Taylor-Quinn, Madeline.
Timmins, Godfrey.
Yates, Ivan.

Níl

Ahern, Bertie.
Ahern, Michael.
Andrews, David.
Aylward, Liam.
Barrett, Michael.
Brady, Gerard.
Byrne, Hugh.
Byrne, Seán.
Calleary, Seán.
Conaghan, Hugh.
Connolly, Ger.
Cowen, Brian.
Daly, Brendan.
De Rossa, Proinsias.
Doherty, Seán.
Fahey, Francis.
Fahey, Jackie.
Faulkner, Pádraig.
Fitzgerald, Liam Joseph.
Flynn, Pádraig.
Foley, Denis.
Gallagher, Denis.
Gallagher, Pat Cope.
Geoghegan-Quinn, Máire.
Gregory-Independent, Tony.
Haughey, Charles J.
Hilliard, Colm.
Hyland, Liam.
Keating, Michael.
Kirk, Séamus.
Kitt, Michael.
Lenihan, Brian.
Leonard, Jimmy.
Leonard, Tom.
Leyden, Terry.
Brady, Vincent.
Brennan, Mattie.
Brennan, Paudge.
Browne, John.
Burke, Raaphael P.
Lyons, Denis.
McCarthy, Seán.
McCreevy, Charlie.
McEllistrim, Tom.
Mac Giolla, Tomás.
Molloy, Robert.
Morley, P.J.
Moynihan, Donal.
Nolan, M.J.
Noonan, Michael J.
(Limerick West)
O'Connell, John.
O'Dea, William.
O'Hanlon, Rory.
O'Kennedy, Michael.
O'Leary, John.
O'Malley, Desmond J.
Ormonde, Donal.
O'Rourke, Mary.
Power, Paddy.
Reynolds, Albert.
Treacy, Noel.
Tunney, Jim.
Wallace, Dan.
Walsh, Joe.
Walsh, Seán.
Wilson, John P.
Woods, Michael.
Wyse, Pearse.

Tellers: Tá, Deputies F. O'Brien and Taylor; Níl, Deputies V. Brady and Browne.

Question declared carried.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 12 Nov 1986

Private Members' Business. - Unemployment and Emigration: Motion (Resumed).

Deputies

Tá

Níl

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 12 Nov 1986