Andrew Carey
MANY families have suffered poverty and seen loved ones leave these shores for other countries in search of work and although these aren’t the famine years, Enda Kenny said we have faced “tough times” over the last number of years, but we are on the right road now.
In his televised State of the nation address beamed in to homes across the country, An Taoiseach said that we are on the right road to full recovery.
He thanked the Irish people for facing up and coughing up as it were.
“Our daily lives will not change over night”, but he said that we are getting there.
Urging that the banks do more, Mr Kenny said the mortgage crisis must be tackled, jobs must be created and our return to full member status in the EU will see Ireland enter the financial markets again.
The benefits and opportunities, he said, would now present themselves to Ireland.
Mr Kenny stated we would “never” get into the same trouble again and that this week an economic strategy would be signed off by government to steer Ireland through the next six years.
The “mandate of recovery” is not complete, according to Mr Kenny, but the Government, he said, was committed to completing that work. Trust them to finish that work he urged.
Tonight, as An Taoiseach made his address, marked the exit from the three year bailout and a release from the troika shackles…but we have a long way to go, we have more tough budgets, more rebuilding and no doubt a number of hard choices along the way.
Unite and Mandate unions have said that one in ten face the prospect of not having enough food for the family. The problems exist and will be here for sometime before the wrongs are righted.
We have all seen loved ones leave Ireland for Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand or any country with the prospect of work, Mr Kenny believes that in 2020 the workforce will exceed two million people with all the lost jobs recreated.
Will this bring our workforce home from foreign shores, will we see the end to poverty and is it true that will we actually never see a return to the greed and over-speculation that got us in trouble in the first place?
Over to you Ireland, Europe and the world is looking now….
Time will tell if they got it right.
