Calleary calls for reality on tackling unemployment

A bid to boost innovation in job creation and focus on helping business outside Dublin has been dismissed as a “spinfest” by opposition political parties.

Fianna Fáil’s Dara Caleary made the charge after Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Joan Burton launched the 13th action plan for jobs event in three years. Mr Calleary said the latest measures announced paid lip-service to the regions and did nothing for the long-term unemployed.

The event saw Irish multinational ICON announce moves to create 200 jobs in Dublin and Limerick in a new global innovation hub, with the help of Enterprise Ireland funding.

Ms Burton raised eyebrows when she appeared to borrow a phrase Bertie Ahern used in the run-up to the crash, that economic success could be gauged by the number of cranes on the skyline. “I suppose one of the pleasant points of sitting in an over-large traffic jam on my way up to here was that I was counting the cranes on the skyline. And the count was impressive enough,” she said.

Mr Kenny insisted the Government was on target to take the country back to notional full employment by 2018 as he claimed 80,000 jobs had been creation by action plan initiatives so far.

The fourth installment of the jobs initiative aims to give a greater role to local authorities and have more emphasis on population centres outside Dublin.

This fourth version of the plan is to have an emphasis on regional job creation initiatives and a greater role for local authorities.

A “start-up gathering” will be held in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford in October to try to boost the creation of firms in the ICT, medical devices, biopharma, agri/food, and business services sectors.

Mr Calleary, Fianna Fáil’s spokesman on jobs, said the Government was more interested in a short-term PR hit than the long-term unemployed. “Once again we are being treated to a spinfest around job creation, a spinfest that frustrates jobseekers and that ignores fundamental problems within our country.

“The first jobs action plan was published in 2012; the recent CSO figures suggest that there are over 80,000 people who have been on the Live Register since then and are still on it today. What is being done for them? What is being done for the 165,000 people who have been signing on for more than a year?

“Spin is not a solution. We need focused training and reskilling schemes that are targeted towards the skills base of these people and that offer them an opportunity to achieve sustainable long-term unemployment.

“The tentative recovery in the economy is simply not being felt in large parts of the country. Yet the Government continues to stand by while only 37% of IDA-supported job investments in 2014 were located outside our two main cities. A proper regional investment strategy will involve a commitment to preparing and supporting regional skills profiles, an aggressive investment programme to upgrade infrastructure, especially broadband infrastructure, and the reintroduction of targets for job creation in the regions.”