With 1,432 people aged under 25 in Kilkenny now on the dole, emigration seems like the only option for many young people in coming months.
That’s according to Kilkenny Fine Gael Senator John Paul Phelan who says that Minister Lenihan may think “the worst is over” but he said, try telling that to the 184,700 people who lost jobs in past year.
The latest employment survey from the CSO shows that there were some 184,700 job losses in the last year nationally.
Senator Phelan said that this alone shows Brian Lenihan has “lost touch with reality” if he is claiming that the worst is over.
“Employment has plummeted by 8.8 per cent in the last year, with dole queues expanding by 75 per cent. Emigration now seems to be the only option for the 1,432 young people in Kilkenny aged under 25 who now queue for a living. No amount of George Bush-style declarations of victory can disguise the fact that Ireland is still mired deep in recession,” he scoffed.
The young senator believes that Budget 2010 was the perfect time for the Government to introduce wide scale pro-employment policies to get willing people back into the workplace but he said, “it failed this challenge and as a result, the recession will last even longer and thousands more people will lose their jobs. With the CSO reporting a shrinking labour force, workers are choosing to leave the country rather than languish on the dole,” he pointed out.
Senator Phelan is disillusioned following the recent budget cuts and he believes that now the Government simply has no credibility on the economy.
“These are the same people who refused to recognise that Ireland had sunk into recession, and who declared the economic fundamentals were sound,” he stated.
“Fianna Fáil chooses to attack anyone who criticises the Government’s crazy boom and bust economic policies, yet cannot even make accurate tax predictions. But the Taoiseach and Brian Lenihan still indulge in the fantasy that international factors are behind the recession, instead of 12 years of inept Fianna Fáil Government. They ignore the fact that while Irish employment levels fell by 8.5 per cent the EU average decline was only 1.6 per cent,” he added.
Senator Phelan is convinced that Fine Gael's ‘Jobs Budget’ has the ideas, the policies and the vision to start putting Ireland back together again. But he is now concerned that the Government's Budget has divided public and private sector.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fail Deputy John McGuinness said, “in this Budget, the Government has done its best to ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected with the extension of the existing scheme providing a three year exemption from tax on the income and gains of new start-up companies and to include also companies who commence trading in 2010. It is vital that we protect as many jobs as we can while restoring competitiveness. A further range of measures to help retrain people in County Kilkenny who have lost their jobs are also being introduced,” he said.
He added that it was vital that the Government continued to do all it could to help the business community become and remain competitive.
He said, “we must do all we can to protect indigenous companies and industry. These are vital employers and if we can help them to start up new businesses now it will ensure our return to economic grow in the future.”
