The government must publish their full estimate of how many jobs will be lost to Brexit, a TD has claimed.
Responding to the estimate that 10,000 jobs could be gone in the tourism and hospitality industries, Labour leader Brendan Howlin also called for an outlined plan to preserve jobs in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
He said: “It is incredible to hear reports that members of the government were ‘taken aback’ by the severity of the potential jobs losses from a hard Brexit.
"Has Fine Gael not taken this threat seriously up until now? Last year, Paschal Donohoe warned that a hard Brexit could cause a drop of 4% in GDP and 40,000 job losses. What is Fine Gael’s plan one year later to preserve these jobs?
“In the first instance, the government should immediately publish the full extent of their estimates for potential job losses across different sectors.
"Labour has also been calling for months for the government to name the amount of money that will be available, from Irish and European sources, as a Brexit contingency fund specifically to preserve jobs.
“Labour’s proposal is that there should be direct supports for businesses to help them preserve jobs, for example through subsidising short-time working or other ways of keeping as many people as possible in employment.
"We know from the 2008 crash that it is much easier to keep existing jobs and businesses than to create new ones."
He added: “The effect of any hard Brexit will be immediate, and therefore all the more severe than 2008, as businesses’ ability to trade with the UK will be here one day, gone the next, with tariffs, paperwork and potentially regulatory issues all adding additional costs to imports as well as exports."
