O'Keefe rejects FG criticism on jobs

Enterprise Minister Batt O’Keeffe today strongly rebuffed Fine Gael's criticism of the Government's employment strategy in the wake of the latest Live Register figures showing a record 450,000 people on the dole.

Fine Gael Enterprise Spokesman Leo Varadkar had earlier warned that Fianna Fáil and the Greens are leading Ireland into a "lost decade of stagnation".

"Ireland is not working," Deputy Varadkar charged.

"Almost 15,000 people joined the live register in the last month. That means 3,750 people lost their job every week, or roughly one every two and a half minutes.

In a reference to separate figures indicating Ireland had emerged from recession, Deputy Varadkar said "a recovery without jobs is no recovery at all".

"In the real world, a recovery is about having a job to go to and enough money in your pocket."

However Minister O'Keefe insisted the Government is taking the steps necessary to protect and create jobs for our people.

‘We know that behind every set of unemployment figures lie many human stories - and the loss of even one job is always one too many," the Minister said.

He said that the month-on-month increase in the Live Register figures for June 2010 is the lowest June rise since 2007, and insisted that training programmes and extra places in further and higher education are re-skilling workers to take up new jobs in growth areas of the economy.

"The Government will persist with our focus on the core recovery policies that will get people back to work: competitiveness; human capital; innovation; infrastructure; green economy; and trade," Minister O'Keefe said.