Government has failed County Tipperary- Seamus Helaly

Despite emigration, 13,051 people are unemployed in County Tipperary, well above the National average. Tipperary Towns continue to be blighted by unemployment levels well into double figures.

Over three quarters of all jobs announced by this government have been in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway and not a single Tipperary Town has been included in the building of advance factories  and offices announced by the Government.

Even the recent job announcements on the eve of a General Election, mean that we are running to stand still.

Since 2011, when this government came to power, the reduction in unemployment in Co Tipperary, as measured by the January 2016  live register, is 4.4 percentage points less than the reduction at national level. And the gap continued to widen in the last year.

This means that the Fine Gael-Labour government has failed County Tipperary. The present government failed to ensure that County Tipperary got its fair share of new jobs.

To close the employment gap over the last year, County Tipperary should have had a bigger unemployment reduction than the country as a whole, but the reduction was still 2.4 percentage points less than the national average.

I continuously raised the issue of Jobs for Tipperary with Minister Bruton in The Dáil. I continually called on Minister Kelly and Minister Hayes to intervene with Government on behalf of the county.   But we are still falling behind.

I called on Minister Kelly to restore the 15 million he cut out of Leader funding for the county.

I pointed out that there was a net loss of 321 IDA jobs in County Tipperary in the 3 years to March 2015.

Yet, all  the towns of County Tipperary were  omitted from Government plan to spend 150 million euro on providing advance factories and offices to encourage inward investment in its 5-year plan for jobs issued in recent months!!!

We are now hearing pre-election promises of jobs from the same people who allowed County Tipperary to fall further behind every year for the last five years! Why didn’t they do something about it while they were in power?

I welcome any genuine announcement of new jobs, and if re-elected I will spare no effort to make sure they are actually delivered.

Gleesons in Borrisoleigh was allowed to close despite my call on the Government to intervene through Enterprise Ireland.

Recently Supervalu in Clonmel and Tipperary town have closed, all  Xtra-vision stores in the county are now gone and also the Fairgreen Supermarket in Carrick-on-Suir.  This is because the money-in-your pocket, disposable income per head, is 5% less in County Tipperary than in the country as a whole and 16% less than that in Dublin. It is also well below that in Waterford, Cork and Limerick.

Ministers are now scrambling to cover up their neglect of the county with pre-election announcements.