Tipperary Pre-election Jobs – Real Or Imaginary?

The recent February CSO Live Register Figures for February 2016; published for Co. Tipperary last week, like the previous month, continue to remain dismal reading, despite the outgoing Fine Gael / Labour pre-election job announcements over the last 10 months, to date.

We are aware that the ‘Live Register’ is not designed to measure unemployment solely, but figures provided here are most certainly a strong indication of Urban and Rural employment trends. See the figures shown hereunder or check for yourselves, by clicking on the highlighted following link:- http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/statire/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?Maintable=LRM07&PLanguage=0 taking care to use the search criteria; All Ages; Both Sexes; Welfare Office.

In all some 1432 jobs were publicly announced by the outgoing Fine Gael / Labour Coalition for the County of Tipperary, prior to the recent General Election held on February 27th, 2016 last.

These announcements came in the wake of a litany of job losses, 200 at Intellicom, 400 at Lisheen Mine, 50 at Grants and more at C & C, Gleeson’s, Abbott and Boston Scientific etc. Over the past five years Co. Tipperary has been completely unobserved by our current ‘caretaker government’, with 90% of all job creation announcements going to the east coast and the larger cities like Cork, Limerick and Galway.

This now unwanted coalition Government’s more recent regional jobs strategy further added insult to injury; in prioritising investment in named towns, e.g. Sligo, Tralee, Castlebar, Galway, Dundalk, Limerick, Athlone, Carlow and Waterford. Tipperary once again finding itself totally neglected with not one single Tipperary Town listed, for the building of any even one advance manufacturing base or office facility.

Strangely one, if not the only few advance office spaces that was available to attract job creation; to be found in the Tipperary Technology Park on Racecourse Road Thurles; same was  quietly and surreptitiously hived off, before being announced as a replacement for the already existing Department of Social Protection’s new Intreo Centre.

Were the various 1432 jobs announced and loudly hailed by the outgoing Fine Gael / Labour Coalition in Tipperary over the past 10 months, purely a pre-election vote catching stunt?  Tipperary people have very long memories, as two Fine Gael TD’s will most surely attest, following their complete annihilation in last February’s General Election.