Burton: Use debt savings to create jobs

Savings made over the coming years from pushing out the bank debt repayments should be pumped into job creation, according to Social Protection Minister Joan Burton.

Her call to use the estimated €1bn in savings to speed up school building and other capital projects was backed last night by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF).

On Wednesday, during a Dáil debate on the plan to replace promissory note payments with a long-term bond, the Social Protection Minister said the savings should be used to diminish the pain in the next budget.

Yesterday she told RTÉ radio that it should not be used to “unpick” the previously introduced austerity budget measures but instead used to boost job growth.

“At the moment we’re building quite a lot of new schools, we’re also improving and fixing quite a lot of older school buildings,” she said.

“But there is an absolute argument to pick up the pace of that because if you have small-scale building projects in local regional areas that is the way to get people back to work — particularly if you make sure that 50% of those jobs go to people on the live register.”

She said US president Barack Obama had a similar message in his State of the Union speech earlier in the week: “He was saying ‘If you have something like a bridge or a road that needs fixing let’s spend the money to fix it because that gets people back to work.’”

Director general of the CIF, Tom Parlon, said putting the promissory note deal savings towards infrastructural projects would have a “major impact on the economy. It would “significantly reduce” the numbers on the dole and therefore, exchequer spending.