Young people should emigrate now, says Denis Brosnan, a multi-millionaire businessman and founder of the Kerry Group food company. He warns that jobs won’t be available in Ireland for the next five years

"Everybody has to try their best to pull through in whatever fashion they can,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Independent.

"Maybe it's for another generation. You're not going to find jobs in this country for the next four or five years.

"So you can do two things -- you can go for further education if your parents or somebody else can keep you there. But if you can't, just go and emigrate because there are no jobs here. It's a very sad thing to have to say."

In the interview, Brosnan, who is chairman of Horse Racing Ireland (HRI), also discussed the level of betting tax levied on bookmakers.

Brosnan believes that if the government fails to address the issue of the betting tax, the Irish horse racing industry could be in jeopardy.

"Either the industry is bet-funded or we will have to write it off, as we have done with so many other industries," he said.

Comparing the possible fate of the racing industry with what happened to Ireland's indigenous food production, he said: "I've been steeped in the food industry for 35 years, and I saw the export of the food industry out of Ireland in the period from 1995 to 2005, where it and all the jobs associated with it, was effectively exported to the UK and Eastern Europe. During that period, the Government stood still and said it was all to do with cost and cost competitiveness.

"But Ireland was in a boom time and that industry got exported. It would be a great pity now if I had spent 20 years in another industry to see it at the end of its days also being exported."