Sir, - The Green Party Spokesperson for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Pat Fitzpatrick (April 7th), asserts erroneously: "The Minister for Enterprise and Employment declares we are creating over 1,000 jobs per month". He compounds this incorrect presupposition with the spurious argument: "With the present approach, our unemployment problems will be solved in another 260 months, or 21 years".
The correct statistic with reference to job creation, which is readily available from the Department of Enterprise and Employment, is in fact that on average over 1,000 jobs have been created per week in 1996 and 1997. Included in this statistic are the IDA, Forbairt, county enterprise boards and non grant aided employment figures, among other sources. This information is obtained by the Department of Enterprise and Employment from the Labour Force Survey published by the Central Statistics Office.
However, if one was to extend an unjustifiable extension of faith to Mr Fitzpatrick's logic and for the sake of argument exclude the concept of redundancies (as he did) from the unemployment equation, with the present approach our unemployment problems would be solved in a little over five years, and not 21 as suggested. Which, within the parameters of Mr Fitzpatrick's argument, presents a very strong case for returning the present Government to power for a further five years. - Yours, etc.,
Kilrickle,
Loughrea,
Co Galway.