Madam, – Might I correct an error made by your economics analyst, Jim O’Leary (“Still no certainty about a deal from recovery talks”, Business This Week, June 19th).
Contrary to what he claims, there is no joint “ICTU and Ibec job subsidy” plan. There is however the Congress Job Creation Protection Plan, which we launched on May Day and which the employers’ group were to later concede was a worthwhile initiative.
Apart from the obvious – protecting vulnerable jobs and creating new work – our aim was to persuade Government that the jobs crisis was of at least the same magnitude as the banking crisis and deserving of similar focus and attention. But at another level it is of course far, far worse: a broken bank can be fixed, but lives lost to unemployment and lack of opportunity will not be so easily mended. – Yours, etc,