Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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We have had to familiarise ourselves with the same arguments we have had over numerous years. We should monitor overdependency on the same sources for an excessive amount of revenue and try to relate our budgetary surpluses now to the totality of debt because there must be some correlation. Otherwise we will believe, as some people would tell us, that we are the richest country in the world. We saw in the last crunch that all our reserves disappeared within three or four hours. We were not the richest country in the world. We were dependent on too many external issues. When we compare ourselves with Norway, we see that it has 15 times the world's known reserves of coal and gas on its shoreline. They do not have to go abroad. It is right on their shoreline. Norway is not in the EU because it does not have to contribute anything else. It is in a very different position from us when it comes to natural resources. We are not in that situation. We could have been in respect of wind energy. My memory of that is that in some parts of the country, there was reasonable investment in wind energy. Why is it better to be onshore rather than offshore? It is simply because it is nearer to hand. Everybody says it should be offshore. The only reason we want it to be offshore is because we do not want people objecting to the provision of the infrastructure.

When the previous crash happened, it was not so much because we were dependent on one area for our revenue, but because of the way in which that end was being run and the banking sector. I was dealing with somebody's mortgage file the other day. The person borrowed something like €140,000 on their mortgage, which is quite a lot. When the loan came through, there was another €50,000 on top of it. A car was thrown in with it - over the period of a mortgage. It was madness. Not only were you spending today's money, you were spending the money for another 30 or 40 years ahead of it.

They offered a car and a continental holiday and told people they would never get a chance like this again. Then we discover that the money was lent on an interest-only basis, for the foreseeable future in many cases. It was outrageous and it happened under everyone's nose. No one shouted "Halt". I am not making a political point. I have repeated this many times. No one said anything until someone pulled the plug and suddenly we knew where we were: desolate, isolated and alone. We did not have many friends.

In the past few days, we held meetings on the European review of international taxation. Not many friends came from there when we were at our saddest. They were the first to point out to us that we were a tax haven, should be punished and needed to increase our taxation and various other admonishments in the shortest possible time. This was crazy stuff, happening in the face of the most appalling, desolating and devastating crisis we had ever known.

I will come back to the remedies and how to avoid it in the future. As I mentioned to the Chair earlier, the first thing we have to be aware of now is inflation. Our next-door neighbour and other European countries are having trouble with inflation. The eurozone is having trouble with the development of its economies. We need to look at a number of issues. Insofar as we can, we need to ensure that we can keep the foreign direct investment that has been attracted here, for whatever reason, as long as possible and use the resources accruing from it in the best possible way to ensure we do not go into the chasm we have all been talking about. We could talk ourselves into it. We could find ourselves creating a zone beyond which we fall over a cliff. Inflation needs to be dealt with. There is a correlation between the available resources and debt. When it comes to international credit ratings, total debt is taken into account.

We found ourselves previously in a situation of not having any rating. We were not wanted. Our value was junk on the international financial markets. That can happen overnight, and by that I mean very suddenly. It happened overnight on the previous occasion. The next crisis we will have is a world food shortage - famine. It is already raising its head all over the world. We do not seem to recognise it. We do not seem to observe what is happening around us and yet millions of people all over the globe are dying of starvation. What are we doing here? We are thinking about ways and means of reducing our productivity in this area. The witnesses mentioned that two sectors, the pharmaceutical sector and the agrifood sector, helped to drag us out of the chasm we were in almost overnight. They were the two dependable sectors, for whatever reason. Some was foreign direct investment, but the agrifood sector was indigenous. It was at home and we had absolute control over it. We could accelerate or decelerate as the market demanded and as necessary. We have to do something like that again. We have to be careful to ensure we do not contribute to inflation with the money we have to spend now, in the way in which we spend it. A cold hard look must be taken with a view to measuring the effect our policies are having on a regular basis in order to be able to correct, if we go too far down the road. We will be encouraged by everyone. Everyone encourages more spending and expects that everyone benefits, but that is not so. Inflation is still on the rise and is dangerous.