Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 January 2016
2. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation given the high level of job activation and high levels of unemployment, the steps he will take to create more jobs in the economy. [2147/16]
View answerEvery job that is created is good news, and we welcome the improved figures. However, we must examine the situation honestly. Ireland is still suffering from an unemployment crisis, with 81,000 people on job activation schemes, 106,000 people who are under-employed and 147,000 people having emigrated. If one looks at all of the figures, the truth is that the Government has not yet made a dent in the unemployment crisis in this country.
Deputy Tóibín fails to recognise what the Central Statistics Office, CSO, has confirmed on each occasion it has published statistics in this area. Unemployment, which peaked at 15.1%, is now down to 8.8% and is falling continuously. Under-employment has fallen by 33% in the last two years and is reducing rapidly. From the outset, our goal has been to shift an economy that became too reliant on the construction sector, which collapsed in a property bubble, by rebuilding it based on a solid foundation of sectors across all areas of enterprise based on innovation and exporting. That has been highly successful.
There are 135,800 people back at work. In the first three quarters of last year 43,400 new jobs were created, which is well ahead of our ambitious target of 40,000 for the entire year. The rate of growth of employment in the Irish economy is 2.9% on an annual basis. That is far faster than the rate in any other European country. We are making progress but I am the first to recognise that we must make more progress in reducing further the rate of unemployment and the rate of migration and in seeing people returning to work in Ireland. The 2016 Action Plan for Jobs is focused on that. It is a decisive shift from the first phase, which was recovery from a crisis economy. We set a target of having 100,000 people back at work and we have comfortably exceeded that before the 2016 deadline. We are now entering a new phase where we have doubled the target by setting a target of 200,000 extra people back at work. This phase is all about implementing the medium-term plan that we set out in Enterprise 2025 and Innovation 2020. We have a strong record built on entrepreneurship, the regional enterprise plans and the innovation strategy. We will continue to work on delivering that.
Let us look at the figures more closely. The Minister says 135,000 jobs have been created, but he takes the base year as 2012. The Government took office in 2011. In that period, supposedly 120,000 jobs have been created. In the same period of time, the number on activation courses has jumped from 50,000 to 80,000. Of the 120,000 is it safe to assume that 30,000 are activation jobs or schemes, in other words, not fully waged jobs? That brings the figure down to 90,000 in that period of time. The truth is that, thankfully, there are strong external tail-winds helping this country along at present. Quantitative easing, exchange rates, interest rates, oil prices and so forth are all helping this economy. However, the internal competitive advantages which the Government should be putting in place to ensure there is a sustainable economy into the future have not been put in place, unfortunately. The truth is that the singular competitive advantage that this Government seeks is a bargain basement corporation tax.
The Deputy again refuses to recognise what every international publication has recognised - that Ireland has improved its competitive position consistently. Forbes magazine recently listed Ireland as the best place to do business in the world, at No. 1 globally. All of the various competition rankings show Ireland consistently improving its placing and, importantly, in areas that matter, such as skills, innovation and technology, where we have targeted improvements. The Deputy is correct that we cannot take recovery for granted and that there are international pressures which could change it. That is the reason our focus is relentlessly on building a strong enterprise base, strengthening our innovation and expanding the number of countries to which we export and the range of goods and services we export. That is what builds a robust base to be strong in the face of any changes.
The Deputy is simply wrong about activation schemes. Many of these schemes have nothing to do with the CSO's record of people at work. Some of them do, such as back-to-work enterprise. There has been an increase in the number of people who are setting up their own enterprises on returning from the social welfare code. That is to be welcomed. Overall, however, with regard to the number of extra people who might be on schemes, there are 8,500 more people on schemes than when we launched the Action Plan for Jobs. Over 93% of the jobs are real jobs in the private sector. The vast majority are full-time jobs with good conditions.
The waters are muddied to a certain extent with regard to these figures and much of the truth is hidden. However, if one adds the numbers of people who are under-employed, on activation schemes and have been forced to emigrate, the total amounts to approximately 334,000. If one then adds the number of people who are on the live register, one reaches a total of 662,000 people. Those 662,000 people are the collateral damage of this Government's economic policy with regard to jobs. That is a very large section of the population. It is approximately a quarter of the labour force in the State. I urge the Government, in the dying days of its term of office, to put down real competitive advantages. That means investing in roads and rail so people can move around the country or move products around it. It should invest in telecommunications and broadband, the transportation system and in education and health, which have been divested from massively by this Government. However, the Government's plan, according to the spring budget, is to reduce Government investment from 1.8% of GDP to 1.5%, which is the lowest rate in Europe. This Government's ambition is to have the lowest investment in Europe. It is considered that 4% is necessary just to maintain the capital stock from depreciation. How will we have competitive infrastructure in the State at that level of Government divestment?
Ireland's performance in our export markets has exceeded that of any other European state.
Take out foreign direct investment.
We are growing more rapidly than any other European state. Net migration, which was mentioned by the Deputy, is down by 66%. Involuntary under-employment is down by 34% while unemployment is down by 40%.
That is since 2011.
These figures are all consistently going in the right direction. We have published the 2016 Action Plan for Jobs and a medium-term strategy that will ensure we copperfasten those competitive advantages and build on them for the future to have 200,000 extra people at work. That is the impact we will make if we stick to the policies we are pursuing. They have a track record which is there to be seen if one is fair-minded in one's evaluation of them.
