Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to recall that this week is the tenth anniversary of the queues outside Northern Rock. I think that was the first seminal event and the warning to the then Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government that things were going wrong with regard to banking. I was on various committees like this one at that stage and people came in, including many economists, to assure us that everything was sound. I appreciate, in a way, that having learned from the economic profession in terms of getting everything so wrong then that the witnesses are hedging their bets and advising caution, and psychologically that is totally reasonable. It has had to marry that with what the economy, country and people need now. I also appreciate the strategies around avoiding shocks.

The first thing I want to briefly comment on is the rainy day fund and also the witnesses' calculation of Ireland's debt position in relation to GDP and GNI*. On the rainy day fund, I struggle to understand the focus on that even though it is now halved. We had a Minister for Finance who wanted it reduced. He has retired now and I am not quite sure where it is. I think it has gone back up again. As a country, we are asked to meet a target of 60% in terms of debt-to-GDP ratio. At a time when, as previous speakers have said, we desperately need infrastructure development and investment so that we can expand and grow the economy, which is another way of reducing the debt burden, I do not understand the focus. At this point in time, the amount is modest. In the witnesses' various statistics, we also have a cash balance, which is a good thing to have, of effectively around €20 billion such that if there was a sudden shock, we would be able to meet current commitments for a period of time.

The key issue here is infrastructure, obviously housing and also particularly public transport. If one wanted to let people live in places like Portlaoise and Portarlington, and commute within an hour on electrified trains to Dublin and other big cities, we would be able to address this crippling problems of land prices and profiteering happening in the building sector, which also means that smaller builders are finding it very difficult to get credit or to get started again. I wonder if the witnesses could take a wider view. We have a situation where, in my own constituency in west Dublin, the mark for affordable houses - new builds - is €400,000 to €450,000, which implies that even if people have a dowry of a smaller house or apartment that they are selling, their loan figures are going to be about €200,000 to €250,000 at the same time.