Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Listening to the Minister's response, I get a sinking feeling of the sort one might have had if one had watched Nero fiddle while Rome burned. His assessment that we are making progress and the process is working, whether in this country or more generally in Europe, is not one that would be shared by the vast majority of people in this country, the rest of Europe and, increasingly, mainstream, middle of the road economists and analysts. The Bruegel Institute submitted a report either to the European Council or ECOFIN in which it stated current policy was not working. Moreover, the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, recently stated that austerity had reached its limits, while the European Commission downgraded its growth forecasts for Europe. A clear pattern has emerged in the downgrading of growth forecasts and upgrading of the projected increase in unemployment. It is that the austerity experiment, which was first tried here and subsequently extended to Greece and Spain with disastrous consequences for all three economies, is now being applied across Europe where it is having a similar effect. Evidence that these effects are beginning to impact on Ireland in a manner that was entirely predictable is provided by the most recent figures from the purchasing managers index, which show that manufacturing employment and output in Ireland have recorded their largest declines in four years. Is it not the case that this is a direct result of the European economy beginning to contract?