Deputy Willie Penrose has come out to say that this week’s Budget should have concentrated more on job creation. “This Budget was about making working families pay for 12 years of bad government and economic mismanagement by Fianna Fail,” he said.
He believes that the Budget will destroy jobs, and that it will deliver a fiscal shock to the economy that will put even more people onto the dole. The Government is proposing to take 2 per cent of GDP out of the economy in nine months.
“The cuts in the capital programme will have a direct and indirect impact on employment. Construction costs are collapsing across the country. But instead of grasping this opportunity to build schools at a low cost, that will serve our children for decades to come, the school building programme has been cut,” he said.
According to Deputy Penrose the Labour Party has proposed a range of initiatives on jobs and training such as the ‘earn and learn’ scheme. “The Budget announced a scheme on the same lines, but with just 277 places! That is entirely inadequate and pays little more than lip-service to the issue,” he added.
“Likewise, we proposed a graduate job placement scheme, and Minister Lenihan took us up on our suggestion. Unfortunately there are just 2,000 places for 26,000 graduates. Again, an entirely inadequate response.
“Every single person who joins the queue of unemployed costs the exchequer more than €20,000 in lost revenues and higher expenditure. That money should be used to create opportunities, not close them off.
“But instead of showing imagination or creativity, all we have seen from this Government is lip service. There are welcome initiatives in the Budget package, but the scale of the response shows no realisation of the scale of the problem,” he concluded.
