Cork City North West Workers’ Party candidate James Coughlan has called for a realistic jobs strategy for the Northside of the city based on strategic planning and direct job creation by state agencies and local authorities. Mr. Coughlan said that as an immediate priority hundreds of building workers could be put to work if the direct labour unit of Cork City Council was re-established to refurbish boarded up homes and build new ones. He said that the government’s employment strategy was built on sand and was totally over-reliant on the hope of attracting private investment while jobseekers were being treated as a problem rather than as a valuable asset. “The whole approach of successive governments”, said James Coughlan, “has been to pour money at big business and multinationals in the hope that they will create jobs. The evidence has time after time shown that these companies want the maximum profit at the lowest possible cost to themselves. The strategy has not worked and will not work” James Coughlan said that the government parties were in complete denial and were not prepared to open their minds to alternative approaches to solving unemployment and the housing crises.