Anne Ferris (Wicklow, Labour) | Oireachtas source

During budget week I spoke in this House about the two economic wars that the pensioners of Ireland have had to endure, both started by Fianna Fáil governments. The first economic war was started in 1932, when today's Irish 80 year olds were just small children. Fianna Fáil started a six-year economic war with Britain by withholding land annuities. The scheme, like a lot of other Fianna Fáil schemes, backfired badly. It was a complete disaster and our current generation of pensioners and their children paid the price with poverty and emigration that lasted into the 1960s. In 2010 Fianna Fáil launched the second economic war on the citizens of Ireland, but the effects of this second war will take a very long time to recover from.

During my budget speech I referred to the fact that there was not one Fianna Fáil Deputy in the Chamber, and I note that the same is true today.

As we leave the period of financial oversight by the three lenders which bailed Ireland out, Ireland still carries a mountain of debt. Despite what Deputy Thomas P. Broughan said, no one is feeling particularly euphoric about this. The portion of the debt carried by the State stands at approximately €204 billion. The cost of servicing this debt will be €9 billion next year. I welcome the exit from troika oversight. Not only does it give the country back its hard won sovereignty but regaining our fiscal independence also gives Ireland a chance to negotiate a better deal on that interest burden. However, the large capital sum, €204 billion of borrowings and bank guarantees, remains and it will be a burden for every man, woman and child in the country for a long time to come. We need to get that number down to a sustainable level and start discussing realistic ways of doing this.

The first thing we can do as a nation is to expect public service leaders to make decisions that financially de-risk every large decision they make. If such a de-risking approach had been taken, for example, to the case of the Lissadell House right of way, the Sligo county manager would have been obliged to consider the risk of adding a further €7 million to the national debt before taking a decision to go to court, while the cost of each of the 58 days in the High Court should have been foremost in the minds of all in question as the case progressed. Everybody in the public service in positions of power to spend millions or even billions of euro must stop to think not just about his or her own job in managing a county or a city or a semi-State company, he or she also needs to think about how wrong decisions can badly affect the national debt.

Dublin City Council is in the news because of a multi-million euro contract with a consultant related to the Poolbeg incinerator which the European Commission is stating was not legal. We are told the incinerator project has cost more than €100 million so far and it is not even built yet. It is not good enough to say Dublin City Council is financing this fiasco and, therefore, the rest of the country can ignore it. The national debt is a national problem and every city and county manager needs to start considering the bigger picture.

EirGrid is planning to spend hundreds of millions of euro building a line of large pylons between Cork and Kildare. It is supposedly part of the bigger Grid25 project to strengthen the national grid. As the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources explained last week, the objective of Grid25 is to ensure homes and businesses will have power into the future. There is nothing wrong with that objective, except for that fact the consultants appointed by Eirgrid - coincidentally the same consultants about which the European Commission has been questioning Dublin City Council regarding the incinerator - say the main reason behind their design of the Cork to Kildare Grid Link proposal is not to supply power nationally but to export it to Britain and France, two countries that may not need a power supply from Ireland when this large expensive power line is built. This country can no longer afford such a major financial risk.

I welcome the move back to sovereignty and congratulate all involved, in particular the people for getting us this far. The road ahead is long and everybody must play a part, particularly those who make significant financial decisions with public money.

Deputy Patrick Nulty has left the Chamber, but I am sick and tired of him constantly attacking the Labour Party. He cannot even stay in the House to listen to somebody else take him up on using the party for his own gain to get into the House.

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