The OECD Report on employment paints an alarming picture of Ireland’s jobs crisis and shows that the Government’s strategy for jobs is failing dismally.

The key findings of the OECD report are that:

• Unlike other countries, axing jobs is the only option adopted by employers in Ireland. But other governments have been able to promote flexible working options to reduce the impact on unemployment;
• Not only has unemployment surged in Ireland, but people are getting stuck on welfare. Almost 40% of the unemployed now deemed to be long-term unemployed, with high risk they will never be reabsorbed into work;
• The likely economic recovery will be too feeble to address the problem of rising unemployment. Continue Reading

This Government has taken an economic model that was the envy of the world and destroyed it. It was destroyed not by some international tsunami from abroad but by a bog-standard property bubble that was entirely homemade. As the governor of the Central Bank has found, official policy added fuel to the fire and heightened the vulnerability of the economy.

Catastrophic Budgetary policy was central to the collapse. Public spending was consciously expanded at a faster rate than the economy could support. The damage done to competitiveness was ignored. The public were led to believe that the party would last forever. The property bubble that was bringing in new tax revenue was urged on by a Minister for Finance who resisted closing down these tax reliefs. To court popularity, government became more and more reliant on a narrow range of volatile taxes. In the end a quarter of all tax revenue was coming from the building sector. Continue Reading

I am not sure who said ‘Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.’ For me a lot of positive things have come out of the experience of the past two weeks in Fine Gael. First was the well spring of goodwill and support that I received from all over the country. I would like to particularly thank Councillor Jim Allen, who set up a Facebook site in support and the 675 people who joined it. With so many people despairing that politics can change anything, this shows that there are still many people who believe politics can shape up and show that it is capable of a response that matches the scale of the crisis affecting so many lives. Continue Reading