Unemployment trebled under Cowen, says FG

UNEMPLOYMENT has almost trebled under Brian Cowen’s watch, Fine Gael said last night after Government backbenchers told the Taoiseach that the jobs crisis must be tackled.

Jobs was the main theme of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party conference in Galway yesterday but they failed to announce any new measures to curb the spiral of unemployment which has now reached 460,000.

Enterprise Minister Batt O’Keeffe, admitted “we need to do more” but that “things are changing”.

Backbench TDs told the Taoiseach of the need to create opportunities to get people back to work.

Brian Cowen responded that there are more people in employment now than this time 10 years ago and pledged to focus on “competitiveness and productivity” with a new tourism and investment policy to be published shortly.

The Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said Mr Cowen was “in denial” about the state of the economy and had been “the worst Minister for Finance in the history of the state”.

He said Mr Cowen “represents a failed past” and “doesn’t want the Irish people to know the truth about his Government’s failures”.

Mr Kenny said that when Mr Cowen became Minister for Finance in 2004, there were 160,466 on the Live Register which has since increased to 466,923.

Since he became Taoiseach, according to Mr Kenny, the national debt has also trebled and 100,000 people have emigrated.

Speaking at yesterday’s conference, Mr O’Keeffe, hit back, however, and said the opposition did not “have the bottle for battle” needed to tackle the economic crisis.

He said job creation would not come about without establishing a properly functioning banking system and the Government was taking a “coordinated approach”.

“Labour has 40 policy documents but no one seems to know how many are properly costed and implemented,” he said.

The party decided to look at a system of secondment with better links between the third level sector and industry to provide training and work experience for graduates.