I welcome a number of developments in my county. I welcome the approval granted today by An Bord Pleanála to the massive development at the John Mitchel's-Austin Stack Park site in Tralee. This will bring a substantial injection of money into the local economy and will provide 500 jobs during the construction stage and up to 1,000 jobs in the longer term. I also welcome the approval of the Shannon LNG project on the Ballylongford-Tarbert landbank which, if given clearance, will create more than 600 jobs in the north Kerry region. This area was one of the hardest hit by people being laid off work on the island.
Unfortunately, the news on the jobs front in the past year has been very bleak. In the south west — counting Kerry, Limerick and Cork — the numbers on the live register increased from 34,145 in January 2008 to 47,804 last month. Kerry has experienced growth in unemployment of over 100%, from 6,500 to over 13,000. There has been a steady succession of major firms shedding jobs or closing down completely. One of those to do so was Amman which has announced that it is moving a large part of its production to Asia and has made 120 redundancies. Amman is a long-standing company that has been operating in Tralee.
While labour costs are often cited, especially by right wing economists and business groups, as the cause of Irish based companies losing competitiveness, Amman cited energy costs as having been the major factor in its decision. Those costs rose significantly in recent years with a 17.5% rise in electricity last year having perhaps been the straw that broke the camel's back. While the reason cited for the steady increases was the global rise in oil and gas, there has been a significant reversal of that trend. While the price of oil peaked at $145 per barrel in July 2008, it has since slipped back to under $40 per barrel. This reversal has been slow in being passed on to the consumer through forecourt sales and is yet to be reflected in the domestic prices for oil and gas. Where energy costs are seen to be a significant factor in hampering businesses, the energy regulator should be encouraged to intervene and force the providers to cut their prices to domestic and commercial consumers. In the case of households, this would make a significant contribution to combating fuel poverty while it would have the potential to save thousands of jobs.
Another aspect of the current economic crisis and of Government policy in recent years is the lack of emphasis on job creation through indigenous enterprise, particularly through smaller enterprises that have established solid foundations and links to the local economy, especially in rural areas. When hearing submissions for our report to the agriculture committee on farming and fishing in the west, I was struck by the fact that Leader had been responsible for creating more jobs in Kerry than IDA Ireland-supported firms and that Leader-supported enterprises had a 70% success rate. That is surely worth considering, given the massive job losses that we have seen in the multinational sector. While these are difficult times, we should concentrate on domestic resources, over which we have greater control, ensuring that existing jobs are preserved and indigenous enterprises are encouraged to expand and sustain employment.
