Stimulus plan 'spin-driven' - FF

The Government’s infrastructure and stimulus plan fails to make up for earlier capital expenditure cuts and is unlikely to create significant employment in the next 18 months, Fianna Fáil has said.

The party's public expenditure spokesman Seán Fleming said the €2.25 billion initiative was welcome but fell well short of the "immediate shot in the arm the country needs". He described the announcement as a "spin driven" exercise.

Mr Fleming said that having to wait up to six years to see elements of the initiative come to fruition was of no use to "almost 15 per cent of the workforce" who were signing on the live register.

"The Government cut capital expenditure by €750m this year alone and they plan to cut it by a further €550m in 2013," he said. "Today's stimulus announcement will go nowhere towards filling the gap left by these massive cuts."

Siptu, which has along with other trade unions been lobbying for a stimulus plan, welcomed the announcement, describing it as an important first step.

"Together with the NAMA plan to invest €2 billion in construction projects over four years this means that the initial phase will involve a significant boost to the economy," Siptu president Jack O'Connor said.

"It could create more than 20,000 jobs, will increase GDP and improve the public finances through increasing revenues and savings on social transfers."

Sinn Féin said the announcement represented "too little" for unemployed people and came "too late" for those who had already emigrated.

The party's finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said the €2.25 billion plan came at a time when the Government had already announced plans to take a further €3.5 billion from the capital expenditure budget by 2015.

"Today's announcement is little more than window dressing and clever accountancy and the net result of the Government's plans will see a reduction in billions of euro on capital spend, vital infrastructure not being built and an opportunity missed to put people back to work," he said.

The Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed said it was "absolutely critical" that the Government moved in a timely manner from the announcement of the measures to the implementation.

"Unemployed people are desperate to get back to work and it is important that the proposed 13,000 jobs turn into real jobs as quickly as possible," the organisation's co-ordinator John Stewart said.