Dara Calleary
Ceist:1. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the status of his Department’s investigations and follow-up after the closure of Clerys; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38077/15]
Priority Questions
Company Closures
Five months on what is the position in the investigation into the closure of Clerys? What legislative proposals will the Minister undertake between now and the general election, particularly in the light of the forthcoming legislation on workers' rights?
On 6 July I submitted a report to the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to further inform the Government on the issues surrounding the sale and liquidation of Clerys. I also briefed my Government colleagues on the report, a copy of which is available on my Department’s website. It sets out the sequence of events leading up to the closure on 12 June based on the information then available. It also sets out the relevant employment law and company law framework.
The Deputy will be aware that the liquidation of Clerys is in the hands of liquidators under the supervision of the High Court. The High Court was informed at the hearing on 6 July that the liquidators had identified a number of matters which they intended to investigate as part of the liquidation process. I understand the liquidators will report back to the High Court in due course. The liquidators have important duties under company law, including an obligation to provide, within six months of their appointment, a report on the conduct of directors for the Director of Corporate Enforcement and a requirement to make an application to the High Court for the restriction of directors, unless the Director of Corporate Enforcement has relieved them of this requirement.
On the establishment of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, ODCE, in 2001, the existing functions of the Minister relating to the enforcement of the Companies Acts transferred to the Director of Corporate Enforcement. These functions included the investigation of suspected offences under the Companies Acts and prosecuting detected breaches of the Acts. Neither I nor the Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton, has any investigative function under the Acts. The Director of Corporate Enforcement is independent in the exercise of his statutory functions.
I have been informed by the Department of Social Protection that, with the exception of three pending payments, all former Clerys employees have received their full statutory pay-related entitlements.
My difficulty is that it could have happened again at the weekend. Thankfully, the employers who have taken over Arnotts are committed to growing the business and employment in it, but five months on the same situation could have been unveiled at the weekend. On ICTU's proposals regarding facilitating a consultation period before redundancies, for instance, there are issues that issues such as this could be done to try to delay proceedings.
I understand the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, ODCE, is separate, but does the Minister of State have a timeline for when its investigations will be completed? Is the ODCE aware of the significance of this case in terms of the message it sends because it is not being dealt with while the office is looking into it? The message it sends is that it is okay to treat workers like something on a peg in a shop that can be just thrown away overnight and that unscrupulous business people can get away with that behaviour, which is unfair to workers. We know that the reality is different, but while Natrium has got away with it - five months on it looks as if it has - all of the agencies involved in investigating the matter should be aware of its urgency and the necessity of preventing it from recurring. As regards the Minister of State's responsibilities, with legislation being brought forward, how does he respond to the various ICTU proposals revolving around a consultation period?
The various proposals made by ICTU generally relate to company law and the conduct of directors. I know that ICTU representatives have met my ministerial colleague, Deputy Richard Bruton, in that regard. It is worth making the point, however, that the report I published in a timely fashion after the closure of Clerys and the related events takes that issue very seriously. It suggested, as I recommended, that the Department of Social Protection become a member of the committee of investigation, which essentially is a committee of the court and an important part of the liquidation process which is ongoing. It is only when all of the facts and events leading up to the winding up of Clerys are fully known, with any legal challenge that could potentially be initiated in that respect, that an informed decision can be made on whether any amendment to company law is required. As the Deputy knows, company law is continuously kept under review domestically and in the European context, as well as through the work of the company law review group. The group's current work programme includes items on winding up, receivership and examination.
We are all troubled by and distressed at the way in which the Clerys workers were treated. There is an ongoing liquidation process, at the conclusion of which the Government and I hope any subsequent Government will not be found wanting in providing important protections for workers given what happened at Clerys and in the context of the lessons learned from it. We are all very concerned about the situation at Clerys.
I acknowledge the speedy report and its directness, but the reality is that it could happen again, despite the sentiments expressed in the Minister of State's report. Section 224 of the Companies Act states directors must have regard to the interests of employees and that this is among the fiduciary duties of company directors. Surely there is scope within that section to ensure what happened will not recur. I am conscious that there is an investigation taking place, but the liquidator has one month left in which to provide a report for the ODCE. Has the Minister of State asked the ODCE to put him on notice when the report is received? If so, as soon as it is received from the liquidator, his departmental officials will have sight of it to take action, if necessary.
I have a close personal interest, apart from a political interest, in how this matter evolves. I expect that, given my interest in the issue and that of the Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton, the ODCE will keep us informed. There is a huge amount of public interest in this issue. Decisions will have to be taken by the Government and Departments on the next steps to be taken. It would be remiss of me, however, to make any statement on the matter before the process has been concluded. The Clerys liquidation process is in the hands of the liquidators under the supervision of the High Court. We will assess the position when that process has been concluded.
Enterprise Support Schemes
Peadar Tóibín
Ceist:2. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the initiatives he will take to ensure large strategically important events such as the Web Summit can be retained in this country. [37224/15]
The Web Summit is one of the most important business events in the State. Not only does it bring about 40,000 people to Dublin city, but it also offers start-ups an opportunity to network with tech leaders and venture capitalists who are looking to invest money. The Taoiseach has said the 2014 Web Summit was worth €104 million to Dublin city. It is, therefore, a flagship event. Its loss not only represents a loss of revenue to the capital but is also a huge blow to Irish start-ups and the country's reputation. Why did the Minister drop the ball and ignore this opportunity?
My Department and agencies use a range of opportunities to showcase Ireland by hosting or partnering in national and international events that support our overarching policy objectives across our core programmes of enterprise, innovation and regulation. Last week we welcomed over 800 attendees from 43 countries to the Med in Ireland event and the Innovation Showcase 2015 will be taking place on 8 December following a successful launch last year. In January a major conference on financial services will be hosted in Dublin, organised by my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Simon Harris.
My ministerial colleagues and I, with the agencies of my Department, also participate in many third party events that take place in Ireland, similar to the Web Summit, and we will continue to provide assistance and attendance, where appropriate. Between 2011 and 2014 my Department's agencies provided €880,000 in support for the Web Summit.
The Startup Gathering is a recent example of the potential to host and grow events in Ireland, with close to 400 gatherings in 22 counties. This week also sees the first ever National Digital Week taking place in Skibbereen, with over 3,000 attendees and 60 speakers from both the private and public sector.
Annually, Ireland is the location of choice for many international conferences and events in a wide range of sectors. Our offering as a location is marketed through the brand “Meet in Ireland” which is supported by a dedicated team in Fáilte Ireland.
It is, of course, disappointing that the organisers of the Web Summit have decided to move the event, but it is a commercial decision. The Government has been supportive throughout as the company, an Irish start-up, grew from an event that initially only welcomed 400 people to the success it is today. A commercial decision has been taken to move it to another location. Both IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland have had remarkable success in developing start-ups and emerging companies and will continue to do so.
I am quite amazed that the Minister has not addressed the Web Summit issue. He mentioned it in three sentences in a very generalised fashion. The release of e-mails between the Government and Mr. Paddy Cosgrave gives a rare insight into how the Government operates. Mr. Cosgrave has repeatedly said all he wants to do is keep the Web Summit in Ireland. That was his objective. All that it was necessary to do was to ensure proper traffic management and public transport plans were in place. People who had spent money to get to Dublin could not even get to the conference centre owing to the fact that there was total gridlock. Mr. Cosgrave also wanted to make sure the hotel industry was not gouging, at a rate of 600%, in order that people could afford to come. These were simple issues with which to deal, but none of them seems to have been addressed by the Government.
As regards the process in which Mr. Cosgrave was involved with the Government, the e-mails show a laissez-faire attitude, a lack of engagement and dysfunction at the heart of government in dealing with this issue. I simply ask the Minister to answer these questions. Was he aware of the breakdown in communications? Was he aware of the role of the enterprise agencies involved? If so, what steps did he take to fix it?
I am acutely aware of the role the enterprise agencies have played. They take every chance to successfully exploit opportunities presented by summits, conferences and other events.
Was the Minister aware of the breakdown in communications?
In the past four years they have successfully created 40,000 net additional jobs, many of them in start-up companies. Dublin is now recognised as an excellent start-up environment, which has been part of the reason for the successful attraction of the Web Summit. There is such a vibrant environment here for start-ups which has been created by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. Both agencies have used the Web Summit to identify leads and organise itineraries. This happens all the time. However, when a decision is made to take such a conference to another location, it does not in any way, as the start-up commissioner for Dublin has indicated, diminish the capacity of the city to support strong start-ups. IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland will continue their record levels of performance in the past couple of years. Both bodies have dealt adequately and perfectly with this matter.
By his answer the Minister has massively devalued this Chamber and citizens outside who are seeking answers. I asked him if he was aware of the breakdown in communications and the problems arising.
The Minister has not even attempted to say he is aware of it. If we cannot understand and critique the problems, how are we supposed to fix them?
On "Morning Ireland" yesterday, Paddy Cosgrave went even further. He mentioned the €800,000 received in terms of hush money. Essentially, he said the Web Summit was supposed to lavish praise on the Government for what it did but for four years behind the scenes, he went back and forth to try to push the Government time and again to realise the opportunity and make sure things were fixed. Shockingly, he said Ministers were only interested in attending on an invite basis and only to have photographs taken. He also said that Enterprise Ireland had not engaged properly in the process. He said it invested money, created logos and created spin but had not used the event properly. What physical steps will the Minister take to reach out and fix this problem? We may have lost the 2016 Web Summit but what steps will he take to ensure the 2017 Web Summit is in Dublin? I ask him to answer the question directly.
The Government will support any initiative to develop conferences that support the growth of our enterprise sector. The Deputy's original question asked what we were doing in that area and I illustrated the many examples-----
Not the Web Summit.
-----such as the Startup Gathering we have. I am sure there will be successors to the Web Summit in Dublin because Dublin has such a vibrant environment. Just as we supported it in the past, we will support such an initiative again.
I completely reject the suggestion that Enterprise Ireland and the IDA have not used the Web Summit effectively. Only last week I was in the USA on a trade mission and the IDA took the opportunity to organise itineraries around a number of people who planned to visit the Web Summit. We do not work in a blaze of publicity; rather, we work confidentially with companies to develop programmes. The Deputy should look at the figures. The IDA and Enterprise Ireland have used their resources to achieve record job creation in Ireland over the past four years. They have never been performing at a higher level than they are now.
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
Paul Murphy
Ceist:3. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will report on the negotiations between the European Union and the United States of America on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37225/15]
I ask the Minister to report on the negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, between the EU and the USA, particularly in light of the large and unprecedented protest in Berlin, involving 250,000 people, which reflects the growing understanding that, as John Hilary put it, "TTIP is correctly understood not as a negotiation between two competing trading partners but as an assault on European and US societies by transnational corporations seeking to remove regulatory barriers to the activities on both sides of the Atlantic".
Ireland has recovered strongly from the economic crash by developing our opportunities for strong export growth. The USA is an important trading partner for Ireland and Ireland stands to gain if barriers restricting trade are reduced. This is the purpose of the current negotiations with the USA. The mandate given to the EU Commission, which is the negotiator for the EU side, is a broad-ranging one, covering virtually all sectors of economic interest, not just tariffs but also non-tariff barriers, as well as opportunities for global standards setting.
One of the objectives in the EU–US trade agreement is greater regulatory coherence to ease red tape for firms. This will not be at the expense of consumers or standards. There will be no dilution of labour or of environmental standards, no change in governing access of GM products to Ireland, no dilution of the right to regulate and no interference in public service provision. The mandate recognises that each side can continue to organise public services and regulate in the public interest in sensitive areas such as hormone treated meat and genetically modified organisms. This has been reinforced by a joint declaration from EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and the US Trade Representative Mike Froman.
There have been 11 rounds of negotiations to date, the 11th round taking place in Miami from 19 to 23 October 2015. In concrete terms, the EU and the US have made substantial progress on all three pillars of the proposed agreement, namely, market access for EU and US companies, regulatory co-operation and trade rules. Both sides remain positive and expect further substantial progress by early next year. On 8 July, the European Parliament voted for a resolution supporting the EU-US trade agreement, including such a reformed investment protection mechanism.
At the Council of trade Ministers scheduled for 27 November in Brussels, I will have the opportunity to discuss the European Commission’s proposal for a new investment court system. I will also discuss progress on these negotiations with Commissioner Malmström and with EU Council colleagues.
The Minister's answer reflects the soporific strategy of the European establishment, which is to refer to large numbers of potential growth that are not based on reality and then to tell us not to worry because none of the concerns that people have will come to pass. Let us consider the question of the environment. In January, we had a concrete promise from the EU to safeguard green laws, defend international standards and protect the EU's right to set high levels of environmental protection.
However, we have the millennium negotiations, a leaked text that has not been released because the negotiations are not taking place in the open. The leaked text from the EU shows the commitment is purely rhetorical. It contains vaguely phrased, non-binding commitments to environmental safeguards. It is clear that in reality, the right of corporations to profit will take precedence over the right of Ireland, European states or America to regulate in terms of environmental interest. That is reflected in the kind of cases we have seen under NAFTA in the ISDS agreement, where, for example, Lone Pine Resources sued Canada for $250 million due to a moratorium on fracking introduced in Québec. The same could happen here if TTIP is signed off on.
These claims are simply untrue. The right to profit will not take precedence over the right to regulate, something both negotiators have recognised plainly. They have set that out not only in a joint statement, but in the mandate under which the EU is negotiating. It has been stitched into many of the documents to ensure it is respected through the procedure.
Government retains the right to regulate. There are great opportunities for trade. Ireland is three times more involved in trade with the USA than any other member state. The potential gain for Ireland is very significant. There could be a potential boost of €2 billion to GDP if there is a successful reduction in trade barriers. It will be particularly beneficial for small companies as it has been shown that trade barriers are the greatest obstacle for small companies which wish to trade in the US.
There are also opportunities for very innovative Irish companies to bring technologies into the US public procurement area. There are significant opportunities for Ireland. Of course, any deal would have to be voted on at the end but this is a balanced negotiation, which is going well.
I simply do not believe, nor do those watching us, that the right to profit will not take precedence over the right to regulate. The big winners will be large corporations and the losers will be small businesses, consumers, working people and the environment.
In the draft text the definition of "expropriation" is being expanded dramatically. We have terms like "measures tantamount to expropriation", "indirect expropriation" and "regulatory expropriation". That means that any interference with the right of corporations' profit is seen as expropriation.
Under ISDA, of which the Irish Government is one of the biggest champions in the whole of the European Union - the Minister signed a letter to that effect to the Trade Commissioner - corporations can sue in private arbitration tribunals. They choose the arbitrators and are able to win large amounts of money in compensation or, more likely in reality, freeze the ability of countries to regulate in the interests of their people or the environment. The examples go on and on in terms of ISDS. They already exist under NAFTA and will exist under CETA and TTIP.
Unfortunately, Deputy Murphy does not let the facts interfere with his ideology. The truth is that these negotiations and this arbitration will not be in private with arbitrators chosen by companies. The Commission has developed an approach to dispute settlement whereby it can only be invoked where there is targeted discrimination on manifestly unfair grounds. Adjudicators must be approved by governments from among persons qualified to be judges. The procedures must be transparent. There must be an independent appeal process and it must respect and protect the right of governments to regulate. Deputy Murphy is simply inaccurate and, I suspect, is not reading the documents because they might interfere with the conclusions he reached years ago on any trade negotiations.
Action Plan for Jobs
Dara Calleary
Ceist:4. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation as the lead Minister for the Action Plan for Jobs, the steps he will take, following Ireland’s continued decline in global rankings, to ease the transaction of business and Irish competitiveness levels; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38078/15]
We have discussed the report of the National Competitiveness Council and its concerns. The report refers to the environment for entrepreneurship being poor in international competitiveness, particularly in reducing the time, complexities and procedures associated with enterprise start-ups.
The World Bank's competitiveness rankings show it is becoming harder to start a business, obtain credit for business and resolve insolvency in Ireland. What are the Minister's plans to deal with these issues?
From 2000 onwards, on the three main competitiveness indices - those produced by the World Economic Forum, IMD and the World Bank - our rankings fell from peaks of fifth, seventh and seventh in the world, respectively, to 29th, 24th and 16th in the world, respectively. By the time the previous Government left office after the economic crash hit, Ireland’s competitiveness had been seriously damaged, more than 300,000 jobs had been lost in the private sector and unemployment had reached a high of 15.1%.
Since entering office, the Government has helped our rankings improve and 126,000 people are back at work. While competitiveness is improving, there is no room for complacency. The Government continues to undertake a range of significant structural reforms to restore and improve national competitiveness. We have made work pay better, improved access to finance for business, streamlined regulatory processes and reduced the administrative burdens on business. We have also implemented changes to make the tax system more competitive in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation, improved skill availability in key areas and vigorously opened up new export markets.
Our domestic cost base has improved, making Irish firms more competitive internationally. The exporting sectors of the economy, particularly companies supported by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, are winning new markets and creating jobs at record levels.
Since its introduction, the Action Plan for Jobs has recognised the fundamental link between competitiveness and job creation and has been the key mechanism for driving competitiveness in all areas of economic activity. All of the action plans to date have provided a sharp focus on specific aspects of the competitiveness agenda, particularly in the areas of costs, improving Ireland's global competitiveness ranking and making it easier to start, run and scale a business.
Our improving competitiveness performance is manifest in increased employment, with the latest figures showing another decrease in unemployment to 9.3% from a crisis peak of more than 15%. These show the progress being made. I have strengthened the National Competitiveness Council which reports regularly to the Cabinet sub-committee on economic recovery and jobs. This facilitates timely attention to areas of opportunity for improvement.
The immediate challenge is to sustain the recovery under way by remaining competitive. There is a continuing and urgent necessity to enhance the regulatory environment for start-ups and small and medium enterprises to enable them to trade successfully in increasingly competitive global markets. Further actions and reforms driven by the Action Plan for Jobs 2016 which is being prepared will enable us to further narrow the gap with the world's most competitive countries and achieve our objective of sustainable full employment.
Ireland was in the top ten in the World Bank's competitiveness survey in 2010. During the Minister's period in office we have fallen behind Estonia and Macedonia in the global rankings. The Minister referred to Ireland's competitiveness strength. I will cite some facts as opposed to offering fictional spin. New business interest rates for non-financial corporations are up to 81% higher in Ireland than in the rest of the euro area and our electricity and energy costs are significantly higher than the average in the euro area. Any improvement in Ireland's competitiveness is the result of reductions in labour costs which have nothing to do with Government policies because they are being shouldered by workers.
The Minister spoke about strengthening the National Competitiveness Council, yet the Government ignored the council's recommendations as well as its statement that Ireland's environment for entrepreneurship was poor in international terms. The Minister constantly refers to the necessity to support start-up businesses, yet Ireland has fallen six places in the rankings for ease of starting a business. If Ireland is to be the best country in the world in which to do business in 2016, as the Taoiseach declared in one of his rambling statements, we are a long way from achieving that objective and without specific responses, we will not move closer to achieving it.
I will not go into the reasons for the interest rate differential between Ireland and the rest of the euro area other than to point out that the issue dates back to the economic and banking collapse over which the previous Government presided.
That collapse occurred across the eurozone.
It is becoming easier to establish a company in Ireland. The Government has streamlined company legislation and made it quicker to establish a business and easier to raise finances.
Why has Ireland fallen six places in the global competitiveness index?
The amount of venture capital released in the past 12 months was double the amount released in the previous year. This indicates strong growth in venture capital availability. The number of new start-up companies increased by 25% in the past 12 months, as recorded by the Companies Registration Office, and we are experiencing a strong surge of interest in starting businesses, particularly among young people. We have provided a better tax environment and access to finance and offered different products in the field. The Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland has been established and is exploring other ways of enhancing the environment. While further progress needs to be made, the indicators show we have a strong and improving start-up environment which needs to be supported and maintained.
The indicators show it is becoming harder to start a business and secure credit. The Minister referred to several banking initiatives. What is his reaction to this morning's announcement by Bank of Ireland that it will restrict cash dealings at branches, that is, lodgements and withdrawals, to amounts of more than €700? This decision will make it much harder for small businesses, particularly in the retail sector, to do their day-to-day banking, not to speak of older people and others who do not live near bank branches. It will make it more difficult for small businesses, especially retail service businesses which are customers of Bank of Ireland, to operate. What is the Minister's response to Bank of Ireland's announcement?
It is not becoming harder to obtain credit. The participation in micro-finance has increased by 100% in the past 12 months.
Ireland's ranking has fallen four places.
New lending by banks to small and medium enterprises has increased by 26%, while venture capital released to start-up companies has doubled in the past 12 months. There is, therefore, a strong flow of capital to start-up businesses.
In that case, the World Bank must be wrong.
The Deputy can see the figures for himself and I have no doubt that our ranking will improve when they impact.
Action Plan for Jobs
Paul Murphy
Ceist:5. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his views on the implementation of the Action Plan for Jobs; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37226/15]
I ask the Minister to report on the Action Plan for Jobs. Does he agree that it is not an action plan for decent jobs or work but instead a plan for driving down working conditions, normalising people working for free, driving an agenda of tax cuts for big business and increasing corporate welfare?
I assure the Deputy that the Action Plan for Jobs is nothing of the sort. It has been an annual process whereby changes have been developed across government and subsequently implemented with a strict timetable overseen from the Office of the Taoiseach. The focus of the actions is to achieve key targets, principally getting 100,000 people back at work and improving the business environment for growing strong enterprises.
The Action Plan for Jobs has focused on three main areas, namely, programmes that have made it easier for enterprises to establish and grow jobs, sectors that can be successfully developed and measures that allow Irish business to compete more successfully. This has been a successful policy approach. The jobs target has been exceeded, with 126,000 additional people at work. These jobs are in sectors which have solid and sustainable foundations with good prospects and working conditions. Competitiveness has also improved significantly.
In terms of implementation, there has been a quarterly monitoring and reporting system and publication of quarterly progress reports. Since the action plan was first launched, the average quarterly completion rate has been more than 90%.
One of the strengths of the process has been the open consultation on policy areas where improvements can be made and the involvement of industry partners in the implementation of some of the initiatives. This has allowed continuous learning and development.
The OECD has commended the policy approach and made useful suggestions which have been incorporated. In 2015 we have deepened the process by developing regional action plans which can drive the same collaboration at regional level.
My intention is to publish the Action Plan for Jobs 2016 in mid-January next. My Department is developing the 2016 action plan and engaging bilaterally with enterprises and Departments to identify actions to ensure the plan is as ambitious and impactful as possible and will keep us on track to achieve our goal of having 2.1 million people in employment by 2018.
The Minister's use of the phrase "improving the business environment" gives the game away. The approach of the Fine Gael Party, to which the Labour Party has unfortunately acquiesced, is based on the idea that the State cannot create jobs but can only create the environment in which big business can create them. To achieve this end, businesses must be incentivised. This approach lies at the heart of the Action Plan for Jobs and its extent is demonstrated in the case study on page 72 of the 2015 action plan. It refers to a company which receives free labour through JobBridge for nine months and subsequently hires the same intern through JobsPlus, for which it receives an additional €10,000 from the State. From the employer's point of view, the pretence of training usually associated with the schemes is dropped and she freely admits that JobBridge and JobsPlus are now the "backbone" of her "growing business". At the heart of the action plan is a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to employers. More than 80,000 people are on activation schemes, many of whom are being grossly exploited. A review of JobBridge has been alluded to. What is the status of this review? Is the Government open to abolishing the scheme?
Again, Deputy Murphy seeks to distort the reality. The truth is the jobs being created are quality jobs. In the past two years all of the jobs have been full time. There has been a reduction in part-time work, in particular involuntary part-time work has dropped by 23%. Unemployed people have been major beneficiaries of this progress and the number of people on the live register has decreased by 111,000 over the past three years. The number of long-term unemployed has dropped by 60%. With regard to the prevalence of schemes, 9,500 extra people are on schemes overall, but 92% of all employment growth has nothing whatever to do with schemes. These jobs are in quality sectors such as manufacturing, ICT, financial services, business services and engineering, and they are all supported by IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland. They are in good sectors with a sustainable future. We also see a recovery in employment in construction, another sector with good pay rates and good conditions. The Deputy seeks to distort reality just to fit his own view of the world.
Let me tell the Minister about some reality. In my constituency a number of places in a vocational training opportunities scheme, VTOS, which is a further education scheme, were cut and instead we have extensive use of the Gateway scheme whereby hundreds of peoples have been working for €1 for 20 hours a week for almost two years. They are involved in protests against the scheme, which they describe as soul destroying. The morale of the group is very down. People treat it like a prison sentence at this stage because they simply do work which is meaningless and they do not feel valued for it. This is what faces ordinary people, but for corporations, between Starbucks, Apple, Google and the other, the Action Plan for Jobs and the general approach of the Government means not paying any tax. The Government was forced to drop the double Irish a year ago, but one year later we have the knowledge development box, which is another tax loophole aimed at corporations. The Government's job creation agenda is to give the corporations all of these incentives and free money and then ensure they do not pay any tax.
The Deputy seeks to denigrate work experience programmes, but the truth is every country which seeks to achieve a transition for people who have been out of work for a period after an economic crash like we have experienced use such programmes. The good news, which the Deputy refuses to acknowledge, is that of the 126,000 extra people at work 92% of them are in initiatives not supported by the State in any way. They are in strong sustainable sectors. They provide good conditions and they are growing strongly. They are in sectors we have targeted, such as manufacturing, engineering, ICT and financial services. These are all sectors with long-term prospects. They are also in very important traditional sectors such as food and tourism. We are getting a broad-based recovery; the Deputy does not want to recognise this, but it is the reality. We see our streets are busy with traffic and restaurants and bars are fuller. There is a recovery and we need to build on it. This is what we are intent on doing.