Michael Noonan recalls Christmas presents of old at craft shop launch in Limerick

As The Late Late Toy Show cast a magical spell over the nation last night, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan recalled how Santa had unleashed him as Limerick’s answer to gunslinger Billy the Kid.

Mr Noonan was speaking of his fondest Christmas Day boyhood memory, which was discovering what a generous visitor from the North Pole had left under the Christmas tree at the family home in Loughill when he was seven.

He said: “I got two cowboy guns, a belt, and holsters. That Christmas I rode the range. I was one of the hottest cowboys in Loughill.”

Nowadays, reading, rather than ranging, takes up most of the finance minister’s festive break.

“I read a lot over Christmas,” he said. “I am waiting to see what comes in the presents from the children and the grandchildren. I am hinting to my daughter in Dublin that I’d like to get the new biography on Margaret Thatcher. I have read the reviews. The middle book dedicates a lot of the material to relationships with Ireland and so I’d like to read that as a priority. I understand it’s very good and very insightful.”

Mr Noonan was speaking when he opened the Craft Hub in Lower Cecil St, Limerick. With unemployment down to 9%, he said if it reached 6%, “we will be running out of workers as a percentage of people on the Live Register who, through no fault of their own, are not able to work”.

He added: “There’s a lot more work to be done to get more jobs, and we will continue with the pressure to get those jobs.”

The target for 2020 is to have the highest number of people ever employed in the State.

“You get a better view of it if you look at the number at work, rather than the number out of work,” said Mr Noonan. “We are just touching up towards 2m people at work again now. I think the highest peak ever was around 2.1m.

“So we think, over the next five years, 200,000 jobs can be created. But these are depending on things continuing to go well. But we’d have a strong view domestically things will continue to go well. There are some risks from abroad that we don’t control.”