As we reach the end of this session, on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party I express our sincere thanks to the staff of the House for their dedication and commitment throughout the session. It has been a particularly challenging time for them and their families. They deserve our good wishes as they attempt to have some time off from here. To the members of the media who have endured our antiquated and outdated method of doing business in the past session and to the rest of the members of the press gallery, I express our good wishes as they head for their summer break. I thank the Ceann Comhairle sincerely on behalf of our party for the way he has co-operated and worked with us in our effort to do our business.

Has Deputy Dooley his bucket and spade?

It is interesting that the Taoiseach has announced that he has seen the light and that the Government will create jobs.

A three-point plan. It was a five-point plan.

We are told there will be a new focus on jobs, but we have heard this many times in the past two and a half years and there has been little by way of real effort or exercise-----

Some 2,000 per month.

-----in bringing it to fruition.

Those are the Minister's expenses.

The Taoiseach told the Irish Independent today that the Government plans to create 75,000 jobs by taking people off the dole. I am all for giving people hope, but not on the back of false promises. It would seem that, instead of job creation, people must realise that work actually pays. The Taoiseach has come up with an interesting concept there. There is more than a hint of a belief that people are choosing to stay on social protection instead of working or seeking work.

Whatever that contention might have held during the Celtic tiger era or better times, I see no indication that jobs are being left vacant or that people are failing to take up employment because they find life easier on social welfare. Maybe the Labour and Fine Gael parties have some interesting insights and will allude to them.

More insights than Fianna Fáil anyway.

The Government's Action Plan for Jobs was announced 18 months ago and has been re-announced quite a few times since. It was due to create 100,000 jobs by 2016. How credible is the commitment given in the Government's previous promises on job creation that, unfortunately, have not come to fruition? How credible can today's announcement be when the Government has not achieved its targets? NewERA, a Fine Gael document from some time ago, was due to create 100,000 jobs. Where has that gone? To the best of my knowledge, the only job created by NewERA is the role for the Minister of State from County Louth. There is quite a bit to go.

This announcement is even more extraordinary, given the fact that Fianna Fáil's call, which was made more than one and a half years ago, for measures to improve employment, including the use of the National Pensions Reserve Fund, NPRF, was ignored until the country was back in recession.

This is ridiculous.

I thank Deputy Dooley, but we are over time.

He is losing the House.

By closing down the Seanad, more jobs will be gone.

Given the chorus from the Labour Party, it is clearly upset by the facts being placed before it.

The Deputy should put his question.

If that party's Members gave me an opportunity to make my points to the Tánaiste, I would not need to disrupt them.

Send in the next one. Deputy Dooley has failed again.

Deputy Dooley is over time. That is unfortunate for him.

The economy is bouncing along the bottom despite the Minister for Finance's claim that it was about to take off like a rocket. How does the Government intend to take people off of social protection and create 75,000 jobs?

I join Deputy Dooley in expressing thanks to the Ceann Comhairle, the staff of the House and everyone who works here, including the media, for what has been a long and productive session since Easter.

I am glad that Deputy Dooley has raised the issue of employment with me. In the three years before the general election after which this Government was formed, 250,000 jobs were lost in the economy under Fianna Fáil's watch.

Hear, hear.

That is some record.

This amounted to 80,000 jobs per year in a three-year period.

Failure.

This situation is turning. Jobs in the private sector are being created at a rate of approximately 2,000 per month. The number of people in employment has increased for the first time since 2008. The number of people on the live register is declining, but a great deal more needs to be done.

At 7%.

Getting people back to work is the cornerstone of the economy's recovery. It is the primary focus of this Government. We all know the kinds of target that have dominated political and economic discussion in this country in recent years. Those targets must be met in terms of the troika and so on.

We are about to exit the programme. As a country, we need to set ourselves a new target, that being, full employment. We must create employment for people who lost jobs during the recession, for young people who are leaving school and college and cannot find work and for people who have needed to emigrate and would like the opportunity to return.

Hear, hear.

For this reason, we have adopted a range of measures to address the employment crisis. This is why we are having a special meeting of the Cabinet today on the jobs crisis.

Another one.

That is why the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, introduced the Pathways to Work scheme. In addition, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, introduced a stimulus package last year. We also decided to establish a strategic investment fund to provide funding that will stimulate growth in our economy. In addition, we got agreement at European level on the youth guarantee and provided funding for it to address the problem of youth unemployment.

Every single day, the Government is working on initiatives to get people back to work, as well as promoting economic growth, increased investment so that jobs are created, and increased confidence in our domestic economy. No one has ever argued that it would be easy or that there would be a single, silver bullet solution to unemployment. A range of measures are joined up across Government through Action Plan for Jobs. Every Department and State agency is working in a co-ordinated manner to promote the one thing that unemployed people need most, which is increased employment opportunities. Every Member of this House should support the Government's efforts in that regard.

The Tánaiste's indignation is welcome. If I were to go back over the record of the Dáil when the Tánaiste was on the Opposition benches, I am sure it was the same script he repeated every week. The only difference now is that the Tánaiste has been on the Government benches for the past two and a half years. The record, unfortunately-----

You broke it and we are fixing it.

I need no history lesson from you, so keep to yourself for a minute and work out where you are going on your holidays.

You do need it.

I need no history lesson about what happened. The Tánaiste will be aware that there was an election in the meantime. The Government was elected on the basis of job creation commitments made by Labour and Fine Gael. The fact of the matter is, however, that the jobs are not there.

More people are working.

The Tánaiste has given interesting employment figures that seem to gloss over the facts. If one teases through them, one will find that many full-time jobs have become part-time ones. Labour activation has come into play with people being taken off the live register numbers and, in addition, people have emigrated. Therefore, what the Tánaiste believes to be an increase of 2,000 jobs per week is a farce when one teases it out.

The Deputy should put a supplementary question.

The Tánaiste has announced the same thing three or four times. He has achieved nothing else in the meantime other than job announcements.

A question please, Deputy.

There is a big difference between job announcements and those jobs coming to fruition. I know all about it. I come from a county that has often been subject to hundreds or thousands of job announcements over time, but they never came to fruition, so we will go back to the basic question.

No, the Deputy will not go back. He is going nowhere. He is supposed to ask a supplementary question, but is now three minutes over his time.

I have two simple follow-up questions. How does the Tánaiste intend to demonstrate that work can actually pay?

It is simple, all right.

The Taoiseach has said he will demonstrate that work can pay. Second, how will the Tánaiste engage differently with the unemployed to convince them to find a job in an environment where the Government has failed to create employment? One only has to look-----

Will the Deputy please resume his seat?

That is an awful insult to people who are out of work.

Employers are unable to get the appropriate level of finance from the financial institutions to create jobs. They are only getting a trickle. One need only speak to the small and medium enterprises to appreciate that.

When I ask the Deputy to stop, he should please stop and not totally ignore the Chair. The Deputy is way over time. I have been very fair to him.

Deputy Dooley does need a history lesson. Fianna Fáil wrecked this country's economy.

And left the dregs.

In the three years before the people rightly booted it out of office, they presided over the loss of 250,000 jobs in this economy.

We are witnessing history repeating itself with this Government's carry on.

No government in this country - and to my knowledge no government in modern times in Europe or any other developed country - has ever presided over such a loss of employment in its own economy. It was a disgraceful record, and our job has been to turn that around.

You are not doing it.

Clark Kent himself.

We are turning it around. For the first time since 2008, the number of people at work has increased. In 2012, the IDA had its best year in ten years. Enterprise Ireland has had a record year for exports. All of that is sustaining, supporting and building jobs in this country.

The Tánaiste is spending more time on the Government jet.

Frankly, I find the Deputy's attitude to unemployed people patronising and unacceptable.

They are being left on social welfare by the Government.

People who are out of work know very well that they would be better off in work, earning a living, which is what they want to do. That is what they expect the Government to work on to help create the jobs they need.

Unlike Deputy Dooley's Government, this Government is not satisfied to leave unemployed people sitting idle and unable to develop the skills to improve their opportunities for getting back to work. That is why we have introduced the Pathways to Work scheme which will enable people to identify what they need to be re-employed. In that way they can equip themselves better to take up employment opportunities when they become available. The world of work is changing, which is why we have reformed the education and training system.

They are closing schools.

The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, is undertaking that reform through the establishment of SOLAS. The development of education and training means the introduction of JobBridge and a range of other measures to assist unemployed people either to get education, training, work or work experience - whatever it takes to get them back into the workforce. There are two parts to the equation. One is to do what is necessary to generate jobs and the other is to equip unemployed people so that they will be in a position to take up those employment opportunities when they become available.