Gilmore accused of 'back-slapping'

EMIGRATION:TÁNAISTE EAMON Gilmore was accused of being the "minister for emigration" as Sinn Féin claimed 210 people had moved abroad every day since the formation of the administration.

Mr Gilmore rejected an allegation by Sinn Féin jobs spokesman Peadar Tóibín that the Government engaged in a “back-slapping fest” to mark one year in office at a time when people “feel they are falling off a cliff”.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs said it was “not going to be an overnight success, and there was no back-slapping fest yesterday”.

He and the Taoiseach had both made it very clear they had stabilised the economy with some return of growth and an increase in the number of people at work for the first time since 2007, but they were not exaggerating it.

Raising the issue in the Dáil, Mr Tóibín said 76,000 people emigrated last year, and thousands attended jobs fairs in Dublin and Cork “in an effort to leave the country to work”.

He claimed “a generation of the GAA is being deleted from communities throughout the community”.

Highlighting bank job losses, the 9,000 public sector voluntary redundancies and the roughly 1,400 people emigrating every week, the Meath East TD said the €3.1 billion promissory note the Government was due to pay at the end of the month “into a bank that has no customers” was a “completely jobs-free investment”.

He said the Government was spending “seven times more money on this promissory note than all the money it will spend in the IDA, Enterprise Ireland, Shannon Development and the county enterprise boards for one year in total”.

Mr Gilmore said “it’s a great pity Sinn Féin didn’t think of this three years ago when you voted for the bank guarantee, which is why we have to pay the promissory note”.

He said “political slagging and slogans were not going to get people back to work” when Mr Tóibín described the fiscal compact treaty as the “emigration and unemployment treaty”.