Business in rural Ireland has been decimated, TD Stephen Donnelly has said.
"I travelled last weekend around towns and villages in Mayo and I would say there were some where one in every three shopfronts was closed and others where two in every three were closed,'' he said.
“Entire towns and villages are becoming ghost towns, which clearly needs to be addressed.’’
Mr Donnelly, a Social Democrat deputy, said commercial vacancy rates in his Wicklow constituency were still 13 per cent.
Sadly, he added, the greatest reduction in unemployment over the past five years had been due to emigration. Some 35,000 people had emigrated last year alone, he added.
Mr Donnelly said he was shocked to read that 220,000 people under 25 had left Ireland since the economic crisis began. “That is a huge number of people for the size of our population.”
Speaking during a debate on delivering sustainable full employment, Mr Donnelly said Ireland should utilise multinationals much more fully to create jobs.
“Long may these companies continue to come, and long may they stay,” he said, “but we must start linking indigenous industry much better to the multinationals.”
Surpassed target
Minister for Jobs Mary Mitchell O’Connor, said some 155,000 more people were in employment today than in 2012, surpassing the original target of 100,000.
The Government was committed to sustaining that rate of job creation and delivering sustainable full employment by 2020,” the Minister said.
Fianna Fáil spokesman Niall Collins said there was a two-tier recovery, with differences between the greater Dublin area and the east coast compared with other regions.
Unemployment rates were lowest in the capital and the greater Dublin area, hovering between 6-7 per cent. The rate was significantly higher in other regions, Mr Collins aid, at 11.l6 per cent in the midlands, 12.5 per cent in the southeast and 12.2 per cent in the west.
He said some 50 per cent of all IDA site visits from 2012 to last year were in Dublin, and that 48.7 per cent of IDA jobs in 2014 were in Dublin and the eastern region.
Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan said Ireland now had the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of low-paid workers in the OECD.
