Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for accepting the issue of job creation in Inishowen for tonight's Adjournment debate. Many people believe Donegal has been hard hit by the loss of so many jobs in Fruit of the Loom in recent years, and that is so. The most recent announcement of 300 to go in Buncrana between now and the spring is yet another body blow to a peninsula that was already reeling from previous announcements on job losses. However, it is not only Fruit of the Loom that has closed in Inishowen. Last Friday we had the news of yet another factory closure in Carndonagh with the loss of 19 jobs and in the past 18 months we have had a litany of factory closures all over the peninsula, which have also impacted very heavily on the local economy.
Inishowen is well defined in geographical terms. It has a population of 30,000 which is roughly the same as Leitrim or Louth. It is in many respects a unit not unlike a county. It is an area that is united at peninsular level in a parochial way, so what hits one town in Inishowen hits everyone. The job losses in many factories have hit every household, but some even more than others.
The task force has come and gone. It issued a comprehensive report and summarised the issues that needed to be addressed. At this point, each Department should be made to give an account of what it has done in response to that report. Have the Departments dusted down their copies since the last time I asked Parliamentary Questions about it? I trust that I will receive that information in due course from the Departments concerned and I will leave that issue in the capable hands of the Minister.
Extending our sympathy to those who have lost their jobs is not enough. As a public representative I have met, and continue to meet people who have been made redundant. They have not sat on their hands or wallowed in their own misfortune. They have followed FÁS courses and I sincerely commend the FÁS staff in Donegal who have really been on top of their jobs. Those who were made redundant have gone back to education, often without any help that should have been available to them, because they did not fit neatly into the right category according to the rules. Those rules could not be altered to assist deserving causes. They have tried to better themselves and have succeeded in showing to all that they have the capabilities to be flexible and are willing to adapt.
As I said previously, we have a hard-working labour resource comprising of people who left school, often at 14 years of age, who have known no life other than a life of work. Those people wish to return to employment and many of them have both enjoyed and been extremely resourceful in rising to the challenge of a new direction. Those people are extremely frustrated, therefore, at the numerous calls for overseas workers that we hear through the media. They are frustrated also every day they turn on their radios and find that there are 600 more jobs for Dublin or 1,000 for Cork, Limerick, Galway or somewhere else that is already saturated with industry. They are frustrated with their new qualifications in computing, for example, because not enough such jobs are being created in Inishowen.
Approximately 2,000 jobs have been lost. To hear about the creation of four, six, ten or 20 jobs is fine and I look forward to similar announcements in the near future as there are many people in Inishowen who are helping to expand their own endeavours to employ more people, or branch out into a slightly different market and thus create small levels of employment. I commend these efforts but 2,000 jobs have still been lost in the area and it will take many announcements of minor job creation to rectify this situation.
So often, people look to Donegal and say "It's so far away. It is so isolated", but this simply is not the case, nor should it be so. What is the mileage from Dublin to Cork, or Dublin to Limerick? What is the mileage to Inishowen? Does it differ very much? Why, therefore, are we – who are within 20 minutes of a major port and airport, and one and a half hours from an international port and airport – supposed to be isolated?
In the post-Good Friday Agreement period, are the IDA and IDB working on a level that has gone beyond being superficial? If so, will the message ever be given to serious investors that for those who need access they have it through Derry or Belfast? I accept that, nationally, access must be addressed. A journey that used to take three and a half hours now takes five. The national development plan talks about reducing "absolute journey times" and fostering "balanced regional development" or "facilitating continued economic growth". We must, therefore, on merit, be awarded dual carriageway status for the N2 in the national spatial strategy review that is being carried out. We must have the by-passes of Monaghan, Carrickmacross and Castleblaney expedited. We must have Ministers working at a cross-Border level to deal with the A5 and a rail link to Dublin.
Donegal can no longer be perceived by those in a position to alter our status as some remote island north of the North. We are an integral part of Ulster, we are part of this great Republic and we are now the only source of labour left in the country. The Minister should commit himself, along with the Tánaiste and other Cabinet members, to ensuring that the issue of job creation on the peninsula of Inishowen is addressed on a large scale. We need decentralisation to assist our status and we need a worthwhile large project to be undertaken. We also need State agencies to do more than long-finger the problem or palm us off with small-minded ideas. As a first step, we need factories to be marketed strongly. We need people to accept our Border location as an advantage and not a disadvantage – a new opportunity for us – or we will not be taking up the challenge offered to us under the Good Friday Agreement.
The level of job losses in Inishowen is unprecedented in the country affecting, as it does, so many hundreds of households.Major initiatives and imagination must be employed to resolve the issue. Our feeling is that where there is a will, there is a way. Let it be the Minister's and our motto in Inishowen.
