Jobs, not jobless, top political agenda now

It may seem like a different world but it is not long ago that it was difficult to find a Government minister to comment on the Republic's woeful record on employment. Languishing at or near the foot of EU league tables with unemployment rates in the high teens, 40,000 a year were leaving the country in the hope of a future. How different the picture in little more than a decade. Now under the star of the Celtic Tiger, unemployment has almost fallen off the political agenda as a top priority and ministers up to and including the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern are rushing to hail the latest job statistics on air and in print.

Not that the 105,000 still reckoned to be out of work in the latest quarterly national household survey are totally forgotten. The Government has produced several initiatives to retrain those out of work for some time, some of them in conjunction with the private sector. But it is interesting to note that despite this, and despite the return home of 40,000 people a year in the last couple of years, FAS is still having to look abroad to tempt more people to service our rapidly expanding technology and pharmacy sectors.