Dr. Seán Healy:

I wish to highlight three points. We need a step change; we need the scale of investment to increase dramatically, not just because it provides a stimulus but because it is the key to jobs and it is key to that infrastructure, both human and hired capital that has been highlighted by Dr. McDonnell. Unless we get that investment we will not get the jobs on the scale that is required. That is the first point.

The second point I wish to highlight very strongly is that there has been a cumulative effect over the past five budgets and certain groups have taken a much bigger cumulative hit. These are groups which did not have much space in the first place nor much scope to take hits. They have taken a much larger proportion of hits. I always give the example that if a person is 1 yd from a cliff face and another person is 1 mile from the cliff, the person who is 1 mile from the cliff can go a lot closer and can travel a lot further than the person who is only 1 yd from the edge. It is very easy to push over the people who are close to the edge. In our view no work is being done other than by Government on the cumulative impact. We are doing our best, without any support from the Government side, to look at the cumulative impact. We would like to see some support for our work because it is important to look at the cumulative impact.

My final point has to do with the overall policy framework. As has been pointed out by TASC, looking ahead not just two or three years’ time but five, ten or 20 years, there are five key policy pillars which need to be considered. Macro-economic stability must be ensured. This includes the investment to which we referred as well as balancing the budget and reducing the debt. There must be a move towards just taxation. To do this the Government must do two things at least, namely, broaden the tax base but also increase the tax take closer to the European average - at least bring it in that direction. There is a need to enhance social protection because there is a quite serious problem with social protection in that services are being degraded, people do not have enough to live their lives with dignity and poverty levels are rising. The fourth issue is to reform governance to include policy evaluation, a rights-based approach and the promotion of social dialogue. The fifth and final pillar in our view – although they are all important and no one has a priority over the others – is to create a sustainable Ireland. Sustainability has to be at the core. We should not be doing things now that will not be sustainable five or ten years from now. I refer to balanced regional development, indicators of progress and well-being, combating climate change. These proposals are explained in some detail in page 5 of our submission and there is a reference to a much larger exposé of our views on the elements of real recovery which was published last April.