Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would say first of all that the Deputy is right. Secondly, I would say to him that I never promised the Government would be able to fix in five years what went wrong because the country was on the verge of falling over a cliff. If one considers Greece, which got into trouble seven years ago, it is still in dreadful trouble. There is no sign of a correction in Greece at the moment because it is following a different economic model.

In this period of government, we must change the emphasis. Much of the fruits of the very strong growth have gone towards reducing the deficit and the debt. As soon as we balance the budget, that monkey is off our backs. Regardless of who is in government for this phase - it will be a different government in its formation - there is extra money for social programmes. The next thing we must do is address exactly what the Deputy identified.

What we did in the five years was that we kept the basic rate of social welfare at €188 per week. We were lucky that there was very low inflation, so the purchasing power of the social welfare payments remained nearly the same, although other bills of course went up. We must now progressively give tax breaks to people at work, increase social spending programmes, so that we have better health and education and better law and order on the streets, and address in a targeted way people who are in poverty and who, despite their best efforts, cannot come out of it. They must get direct assistance and that is the way that it will go, in my view, for however long this Government lasts and, indeed, the one after it. It is possible to correct the ills of the country in a substantial way over a ten-year cycle.

I ask Deputies to consider what has happened in the last five years as phase one, to create the engine and the vehicle again that can produce the resources. Now that we have the resources, let us direct them towards the areas of need without taking risks with the growing economy. We can talk at length on other occasions about how the details of that model might be filled out but I do not disagree with Deputy Wallace's analysis. It is the same as in my own city, and the Deputy beside him will confirm that.