asked the Minister for Industry and Energy the IDA targets for job approvals in 1982; the targets achieved; and the targets for job approvals in 1983.

The Industrial Development Authority's job approvals target was 30,000 for 1982. In that year the IDA approved 990 projects with total job potential of 29,511.

The IDA have now discontinued the practice of setting their overall target in terms of job approvals in line with the recommendations in the NESC-Telesis Reports on industrial policy. The Authority's target for 1983 is to create between 11,000 and 12,000 first-time grant-aided jobs and to grant-aid 900 projects under the new industry and small industries programmes.

Does the Minister consider that those job targets will be adequate to deal with the escalation in unemployment which we are experiencing from day to day?

No. The fact of the matter is that industrial development on its own has never been sufficient to deal with the growing unemployment problem. If would be doing no one a favour to pretend that industrial development on its own will be the answer to the unemployment problem. The hope must be that as a result of industrial activity there will be spin-off employment in the associated services sector which will help us to counteract the unemployment problem. To be perfectly honest, no party has yet truly faced the gravity of the present unemployment problem. None of the measures which we have been discussing so far is a complete answer to it.

Are there any other plans to make up some of the very large shortfall which will arise? Are there any new plans to tackle the problem?

That is precisely why the Government established the Employment Action Team which brings together five or six central Ministers in the Cabinet in discussions on employment policy as a whole. The trouble up to now has been that there have been many different approaches to the unemployment problem by different Ministers acting very generally on their own. The idea of the Employment Action Team is to try to synchronise these to get the maximum return for State activity in this area. One must also face up to the serious problem that even after many of these measures have been adopted there will still be a very substantial pool of unemployment. That is where initiatives, such as the Youth Employment Agency, can be of help. In the overall context of the industrial policy White Paper referred to earlier, I will be trying to find, in conjunction with the Employment Action Team, answers to the problems which Deputy Reynolds has pointed out. I do not have the answer now and to pretend that I did would not be doing anybody in the House a favour.

13.