Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said that the Cabinet reshuffle should include the creation of a new department dealing with employment.
“There is an urgency in the employment issue and getting people back to work,’’ he said.
Rejecting an assertion by Taoiseach Brian Cowen that unemployment had stabilised, Mr Gilmore said: “I will tell him how stable it is for somebody who has lost a job.
“Some 340 people on average have lost their job every day since the Taoiseach entered office.’’
Mr Gilmore said that the official unemployment figure did not include immigrants who had returned to their country of origin, or young people who had given up hope in this country and gone to Australia or somewhere else in the hope of finding a job and economic future for themselves.
“We have read in the newspapers that there is concern in the Government about jobs, which is correct,’’ he added.
“The Greens are concerned about jobs - their own jobs - but that is not what the people of the country are looking for.’’
Mr Cowen said that there was an employment strategy based on the fact that “we must first bring order to our public finances, something that is glazed over by the Opposition, and that we must close the gap between expenditure and income’’.
There had also been the recent Fás and ESRI study projecting the creation of 250,000 jobs between now and 2015.
Mr Gilmore said that young people who were graduating this year would be in their thirties before they saw any of those jobs.
“The Taoiseach keeps forgetting that he has support across the House for addressing the issue of public finances and reforming the public service,’’ he added.
Mr Cowen said: “How long more will they have to contend with the deputy’s portrayal of the economy to the effect that nothing good was happening here ?
“The fact is that jobs are being created while jobs are being lost.’’
He accepted, he said, that there had been increased unemployment in net terms. That happened in recessions.
Mr Cowen claimed there was an incessant Opposition that would not support the restructuring of the banking system on any basis because it did not agree with its policy.
Nor did it have a credible alternative, he added.
“I am sick and tired of this continuous effort by deputies to claim that any decision we took was based on something other than what we were advised and based on something other than the national interest,’’ he said.
