I move:
That Dáil Éireann deplores the failure of this Government to produce any policies to create new employment opportunities particularly for young people.
This Government stand condemned for their total failure and neglect in the area of employment and job creation. They have not taken any positive steps to improve the appalling situation that exists with regard to job creation and the deterioration that has occurred is alarming. In their 14 months in office the Government have not applied themselves seriously to treating the greatest cancer in our society, that of unemployment and especially youth unemployment.
We should start with the programme drawn up by both parties in Government in the halcyon, euphoric days when the Labour Party and Fine Gael were busy hammering together a programme they hoped would enable them to grasp the reins of power. I will quote two paragraphs from that programme. The first paragraph, which was the introduction, was as follows:
The unemployment situation with 170,000 unemployed, 50,000 of them under 25 years of age, and the state of the public finances facing a new Government taking office at the end of 1982 are alarming. Both require firm and decisive action by such a Government. The dual task of halting and reversing the growth of unemployment, while phasing out the current budget deficit, poses a greater challenge than any Irish Government has faced domestically since the early years of the State.
My colleague, Deputy Power, has dealt with the U-turn with regard to the budget deficit and I do not intend to dwell further on that. However, I wish to draw the attention of the House to the decisive and firm action that was going to be taken by this great new Government in those euphoric days to tackle the unemployment problem. Let me refer the House to the unemployment figures issued yesterday. The 170,000 referred to in the joint programme has become 215,552, an increase of 45,000. Unemployment among the under 25-year olds was 50,000 but now it has become 67,633. Let me quote the second paragraph from the joint programme under the heading "Planning for Economic Recovery":
Permanent structures will be established by the Government to ensure effective economic and social planning.
1. The new Government will set up an employment task force of three economic Ministers led by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste through which the two parties in Government will share responsibility for initiating the immediate employment generating process.
What progress has that much-lauded and often mentioned task force achieved? I want to know from the Minister of State in the House how many times that group of Ministers met with the task force and how many jobs they have created.
I referred to the growth in the unemployment figures as announced yesterday. Before going further I want to draw the attention of the House to the wordy amendment submitted in the name of the Minister for Labour. The amendment states:
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute:
", while greatly concerned at the continuing high level of unemployment and in particular its impact on young people, notes that the rate of growth of unemployment has been halved since the election of the Government in December, 1982 and approves the actions and plans of the Government which, in conjunction with an adequate response from every section of the Community, will provide the necessary framework to combat unemployment successfully".
Will the House be told what are the actions and the plans of the Government? Has ever a more negative amendment to a motion been put before this House? What an achievement to halve the rate of growth of unemployment. This is said after a month in which we had the highest growth in unemployment. Shame on the Minister of State in the House, shame on the Government and shame on an unimaginative Minister who could not find a better formula of words to amend our motion. It proves their lack of interest in solving what I stated was the greatest cancer in our society.
We are talking of 215,000 people unemployed but that does not include many of the closures that have been announced and that have taken place in the past week or so. It does not include the young people who will come on the employment market in a few months, probably somewhere in the region of 19,000 to 20,000. When we consider those people we are talking about 250,000 and when we realise that fewer than 196,000 are employed in manufacturing industry we must become very alarmed at the figures. Despite all this, the Government are proud they have halved the rate of growth of unemployment. In their 14 months in office there has been an increase of 45,000 in the unemployed, including 7,500 for the month of January which was the highest total ever recorded for January.
The second budget introduced by this Government gave little or no hope to the unemployed or to those whose jobs are in jeopardy. Neither did it give any encouragement to employers to increase their number of workers. If we realise that each additional 1,000 persons on the dole queues costs us in the region of £2,500,000, that gives us some indication of the inadequacy of the budget with regard to lack of planning. This budget had one objective, namely, to keep the Labour Party and Fine Gael in Government for a little while longer. The budget did not have any plan or programme to try to arrest the enormous growth in our unemployment figures. The Government are leading the country on a dangerous downward trend. Confidence and optimism have been shattered and it is becoming increasingly apparent that the budget was aimed to devise ways and means to keep these two parties in office.
Let me recollect some of the comments of these parties in those days of October and November 1982. Fine Gael said they would halt and reverse the trend of unemployment. Would those people who like to talk about U-turns compare the comments of those days with this evening's amendment? Labour said they were going to have a voice in Government that would be heard. In fact, they went much further. They said:
The Labour Party offers such a radical programme in this election. We represent ordinary working people,——
They do not represent very many working people today ——
——not big business, large farmers, or land speculators. Our policies are different.
Labour does not accept the prospect of continuing mass unemployment. But young people must have the legitimate hope of worthwhile work.
Labour stands for planned economic development and for a jobs programme led by the public sector.
In their comments on the economy and jobs they said:
LABOUR'S POLICY IS:
1. active public sector involvement in job creation in industry with rigorous projects appraisal to ensure lasting productive jobs;
What has become of that public sector job creation programme? What has become of that rigorous project appraisal? In the second paragraph they said:
2. a strong, effective and independent National Development Corporation, with powers to invest up to £500 million in equity capital in industry and with borrowing powers of £1,000 million.
The National Development Corporation we have heard about for so long has obviously been put to bed or laid to rest, but no longer forms a plank in a Government who do not have any commitment to job creation or to rescuing the legitimate hopes of young people to whom Labour promised so much. The figure 50,000 people has become 67,000, with a further 20,000 school-leavers to come on the market within the next few months.
I will now discuss the task force. First, a Government are elected to govern, not to blame task forces, having appointed them, not to set up review bodies, and not to set up committees to examine what are really Government problems and decisions. With this Government we have had jobs created, but they were jobs for the ardent party faithful by way of advisers, committees, review bodies, task forces and State board appointments. They are the only jobs we have seen emanating from this inefficient Government.
This Taoiseach, with the help of highly paid handlers, has been avoiding the main problems and has placed a heavy reliance on public relations as a substitute for Government. These handlers, highly paid and well provided for, are the people who decide what the media, the press and the public are to be told about certain proposed and hoped for Government actions. This situation has become so ludicrous that I will quote from one of the papers prepared by these handlers — the New Democrat, a Fine Gael Party paper. On the front page there are a number of engagements and I congratulate the lucky persons involved but there the joy ends. On the front page there is a heading “Take off: Up, and Away, say Economists”, “By a Special Correspondent”. Even a Fine Gael member was ashamed to put his name to this production. He did not have the audacity to put his name to the dishonest rubbish written in this paper. He said:
One year after taking office the Government has turned around the economy and positioned it to achieve real growth for the first time in the '80s.
Now the Budget of Finance Minister, Alan Dukes, will consolidate the economic gains of the past 12 months and fuel recovery in 1984 and beyond.
Is this what the 250,000 people who are unemployed want to read? How far can Fine Gael go with this dishonest rubbish? There must be some limit. This argument goes on to say that national pride has been restored. What do they mean by that, particularly when there are 67,000 young people under 25 years unemployed — 14 months ago that figure was 40,000. This special correspondent is obviously one of these very eminent and highly paid handlers whom this Government believe are the top priority and whose greatest concern is to provide stories for the general public. As Deputy Power said very effectively, the general public are not easily taken in by stories of this nature and the only luck this country ever had is that it never had successive Coalition Governments. Would it not be dreadful if such a prospect faced the people?
Let us compare this with the criticism at the time of the motion of no confidence at the end of 1982? We had succeeded in producing a plan, The Way Forward. At that time the challenge facing us was the same as it is today — how to provide employment for our young people and still make growth and investment while working within the financial constraints imposed by a severe and unexpectedly prolonged recession. This is the challenge from which this Government are retreating, hiding behind the National Planning Board or the task force, whichever one likes to call it. How many meetings have this committee had with the Minister or the sub-committee of Ministers over the last 14 months? I call for immediate Government leadership and direction to bring together all the State agencies with a view to giving top priority to job creation. This is urgent.
If this motion succeeds in doing nothing else but getting some action from this Government who have been sitting on this very important issue, it will have served its purpose. We must convince the people behind the Minister that this type of approach is not good enough. This Government have set a record because the unemployment figures for January have been the highest since we began keeping records.
There are a few suggested ways and they are among the many possibilities; one could go on and on. There must be some imaginative people in that Government. Yet why was the chance lost? At present we have a building and construction industry on its knees to an extent not experienced even in the fifties. Unemployment in that industry at national level is in the region of 50 per cent and, in my region, has gone even higher. Surely a further investment of, say, between £100 million and £200 million in public capital projects would have more than paid for itself because of the immediate impact that industry can have on job creation and its resultant activity; one could say almost self-financing. It has been agreed that probably it is the fastest industry to provide jobs and a great one to stimulate activity in the economy generally.
What about the Fianna Fáil agricultural plan?
