SINN FÉIN:SINN FÉIN would use €7 billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund to generate jobs, party vice-president and Dublin Central candidate Mary Lou McDonald said yesterday.
Announcing the party’s 10-point plan for job-creation outside Leinster House, Ms McDonald said the proposals were “fully costed, credible, and, if implemented, have the potential to create 160,000 jobs and many more training places”.
Voters could choose to have the pension reserve fund to be thrown “into the black hole of toxic banks, or they can insist politicians use some of that investment fund to create jobs”.
She said the €7 billion would be spent over 3½ years, with €2 billion invested in 2011. The plan envisaged €500 million being spent on the agri-food industry, establishing central hubs for small and medium-sized industries.
She said 100 new primary healthcare centres would be built. There would also be a school-building and refurbishment programme, and 100 creches built.
The plan also proposes that the national broadband scheme be augmented to provide a fibre-optic island-wide network. Those starting businesses would be assisted, an export strategy introduced, jobs on public projects maximised and jobs created to assist those providing frontline services.
Ms McDonald said, with almost 500,000 on the Live Register and some 100,000 people emigrating over the next two years, the big crisis related to jobs.
“There are many people who have no work, and believe they do not have the prospect of work.”
Ms McDonald said Sinn Féin’s approach was to move away “from constant cutting and hacking at the system and into a new approach about building, growing and developing jobs and getting ourselves out of the hole we are in”.
Asked about the party's decline by three points to 12 per cent in yesterday's Irish Timesopinion poll, Ms McDonald said polls varied.
“We have set out our stall, and we are taking a very different view from the other political parties.”