Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

On the professions, we know this is an area of high cost. The Competition Authority, as Deputy Kenny knows, has produced its interim reports for each profession and will produce the final reports. On regulatory reform and the concept of regulatory impact analysis on legislation and other areas, we published a White Paper last January in which we are committed to having a thorough regulatory impact analysis on each area to ensure there are no costs or inbuilt costs and that we are not doing something to add regulation, red tape and bureaucracy to our systems. That is good. In terms of legal fees, what the Tánaiste has done in insurance and what we have done in PRBI and in other areas to bring down costs is working and will continue to work. On income tax and taxes generally, I could go into each area, whether it be corporation tax, personal tax and so on, but in terms of creating employment, all are quite attractive.

On the argument we could always do better, I will not argue with that because I always try to do better in terms of employment, growth and what this country is achieving. We should not always get ourselves caught up in expenditure. We are spending on the productive areas of the economy which we were not able to do for years. The reason we are spending 5% of GDP on productive investment is that, for generations, we were not able to spend anything on capital programmes. On many occasions, capital programmes were squeezed and reduced. We are now able to spend on capital programmes, and that increases expenditure because one is talking about a great deal of money. In the past six years we have spent €5 billion on roads. These are substantial increases. We have done the same in respect of water services, including the work done in Dublin Bay and in the west. All these works are costly but they are good and help the productive side of investment. We should not only look at them as a cost on public expenditure.

Regarding our debt-GDP ratio, I remember and I know Deputy Kenny would acknowledge that, when the Maastricht figures came out in 1992, we were on 120% or not far off it and were reducing it at that stage. The European model was to get to 60%. It seemed that it would be impossible for us, as part of the conditions for our entry into monetary union, to reach the 60% target. We are now under 30%. We should not become fixated on the fact we are spending money when we are reducing our debt and when the general Government deficit and the current budget deficit, EBR, are very low. We must be prudent and follow fiscal controls, and the Government is doing that. To criticise us in some way for spending, especially on productive areas, is not a reasonable argument.

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