UNITE call on government to invest €2bn in youth unemployment

The Government is being told to invest €2bn in getting thousands of people back to work.

UNITE Trade Union is holding its pre-Budget seminar in Dublin this morning.

It said the policies of austerity have done Ireland more harm than good.

Regional Secretary Jimmy Kelly said that investment is urgently needed - or else Ireland's young people will continue to emigrate.

"More and more are beginning to realise that further austerity is just bringing us down a path of more emigration, more unemployment," he said.

"Young people facing into a really dismal future, feeling abandoned by the whole system and having to leave the country."