Government’s pie-in-the-sky jobs numbers just don’t add up

ISN’T it amazing that whenever the Government announces a jobs’ initiative the total number of jobs that will be created is always some lovely, long round number?

Take, for example, the much-hyped jobs’ budget that was announced back in May. After some initial confusion about whether it was a budget or an initiative, Taoiseach Enda Kenny was adamant on at least one point — it would create 100,000 jobs over four years. Of course, his certainty on the issue was in marked contrast to Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton who, less than a month before the announcement, had written to a range of companies asking them how many, if any, jobs they thought could perhaps be created as a result of the new strategy.

Despite the conditional tense employed when questions were being framed and put to businesses, the Government must have got some pretty definitive responses as the jobs’ figure went from an unknown quantum to 100,000 in under four weeks.