Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In order to move things to a conclusion, because we are going to conclude at 5 p.m., I will try to put a macro shape on the proceedings. Ms Burke’s reading of the economy might be considered a very optimistic one. As a member of the Government I am not too sure whether I would go out to bat for that, but I hope she is right that we will end up in a neutral position at the end of the year if we do nothing, give or take €200 million, which is very different to €2 billion. Is there a danger that all the good work of the past four to five years will go out the window and we will go back to tax breaks and do what politicians typically do?

One of the things that was very evident when the country crashed was that there was no structural tax base; it was very much based on consumption, and that was based on taxes being derived from property and, in the main, stamp duty. I would be interested in what Mr. O’Connor has to say about the troika programme. Mr. Talbot is also indicating. Is there further work to be done on our structural tax base rather than just looking at tax giveaways all over again? Are consumption taxes to be looked at as something that gets put aside for a rainy day rather than being spent on current expenditure? If there is an improvement in the situation, which Mr. Cribben has indicated, people will start consuming more. If one starts operating one’s real time budget out of ongoing consumption, the moment consumption stops, the economy crashes. Even if we did not even have a property crash in the past, the economy would crash because consumption crashed. I would be interested to hear a response from Ms Burke, Mr. Cribben, Mr. Talbot and then Mr. O’Connor on the overall macroeconomic position with regard to the budget.