Darragh O'Brien (Dublin North, Fianna Fail)

I am pleased to speak to the Government's amendment on this Private Members' motion. Both Ministers, Deputies Batt O'Keeffe and Kelleher, have covered many areas of the amendment. However, I want to point to some of the incorrect facts cited in the motion such as the loss of international financial market confidence in Ireland. If our commentators had the same confidence outside observers have in our economy, we would find ourselves in a better position.

Deputy Penrose raised the loan guarantee scheme operated in other European jurisdictions, a scheme which has much merit. I have also called for its introduction in the past. It is good to see at least one small snippet from the Labour Party of what it might do when usually it never commits to anything.

For example, it agreed with the €4 billion in cuts in the last budget but did not say where or how it achieve them. It backed every interest group that lobbied it and said it would not touch them. The Croke Park deal is an important step forward for the country. The past two years have been incredibly difficult for both public and private sector workers. The Croke Park deal gives certainty to the thousands of civil and public service workers and provides a way forward for the country. Again, Deputy Gilmore would not say whether he agreed with the deal or recommend it to the unions, even when some of them sit on his party's national executive. When the deal was passed, however, Deputy Gilmore said he welcomed it.

While the next budget will be challenging for the Government and the country, both Opposition parties will not be able to do what they did with the past couple of budgets by opposing everything and producing nothing. The Labour Party in particular will certainly not get away with this.

Unemployment is a major issue. I, like many other Members, have friends and family who lost their jobs over the past two years. Tackling unemployment is the Government's major focus. In the past three weeks, north Dublin has had announcements of more than 1,300 jobs from the Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, and Stream Global Services. The way in which the national broadcaster, RTE, dealt with the DAA's announcement on "Drive Time" was nothing short of disgraceful. These are real jobs with 500 in the authority and 400 in retail units at Terminal 2.

Some asked where the Government spent the money from the boom. One can see where the moneys went when one sees Terminal 2 and the other critical infrastructure projects across the country that will soon be finished. These projects will have created jobs before November and the budget.

I accept there are problems with the banks' provision of cash flow and working capital for the small and medium-sized enterprise sector. That is why I welcomed Deputy Penrose's views on a loan guarantee scheme. It is also important that John Trethowan is overseeing the banks' credit provision. I must say, however, that having had dealings with AIB in my constituency, I have found it had not played ball.

With 1.9 million people working, the Government's focus is on getting the 450,000 out of work back to work. While I am confident we will be able to do that, it will only happen if we have stable public finances, coherent polices, job creation and, most important, belief in ourselves.

I reject this Fine Gael motion. It offers nothing as usual. While castigating the Government might be politics, it offers no solutions. The Government will face challenges later in the year with the budget, challenges similar to those it faced over the past three and a half years. What Fianna Fáil is about is medium and long-term economic growth and getting people back to work, not short-term, political and populist decisions.

See this speech in context