FIANNA Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said that employment is “the number one issue” concerning Limerick people. During a visit to the King’s Island Community Centre this week, Deputy Martin told Limerick Post: “There’s a very high unemployment rate in Limerick, the highest in the country, and that’s unacceptable.” The Cork TD remarked that the government has “taken its eye off the ball” in terms of job creation. “All the initiatives undertaken in the last year and a half have had a negligible impact on employment levels. In terms of young people coming out of schools and colleges, there’s no sense of urgency about helping them at all.”
Deputy Martin also highlighted some of Fianna Fáil’s employment proposals in advance of next week’s budget.
“We have made a range of proposals to government that they should develop a capital fund using the National Pensions Reserve; match that with a mandatory percentage of the private pension funds and create a fighting fund of €4 billion to invest in projects”, he said.
He cited the Limerick Regeneration Project as “a classic example” of a programme that could create jobs while improving people’s quality of life and living conditions.
Deputy Martin also proposed that state agencies and government departments should “double, or even treble” the number of young people employed as interns.
The party leader visited Limerick city last Friday when he met with a number of groups and local residents as part of a Fianna Fáil strategy that he describes as “the first phase of our renewal”.
“It’s really about the party becoming much more of a listening party. We’re listening to people and we’re looking afresh at issues and we’ll be developing policies as we go along”, he explained.
