Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will deal with the Minister's final point first. The reductions to which he refers to some extent relate to debts that no one ever even attempted to pay down. The reality is that the €8.5 billion in income tax to which he refers equates roughly to the entire education budget. In the past three years the Government of which he is a member has imposed savage cuts in the health budget, which is a little bigger than that for education. The Fianna Fáil-led Administration which preceded the Government also imposed savage cuts in the health sector in the three years prior to 2011. The total figure for the cuts to which I refer is currently running at €32 billion, a phenomenal sum in the context of the national budget. Should the Government not be more robust in its efforts to have some of the overhang relating to the disastrous blanket bank guarantee reduced to a significant degree? The burden with which the people have been saddled is huge. Many economists are of the view that GNP is a better indicator of the level of the burden. When one uses GNP as the method of comparison, it becomes obvious that the country is operating in the shadow of an enormous monolith of debt. I am sure the Minister has read Plan B: How Leaving the Euro Can Save Irelandby Cormac Lucey. I am not suggesting the Government is going to adopt a plan B, but some of the figures put forward by Mr. Lucey and others are truly frightening. There may come a point when the Government - not just individual Ministers within it - is long out of office and the nation, as a result of its incompetency, is still burdened with a savage amount of debt.

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