Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Labour Party on tabling this timely motion. The economy is on the tip of everybody's tongue and the economic outlook has changed dramatically in recent months. The extraordinary complacency of the Government in failing to respond to these changed circumstances has been startling. It did not respond to a call by the National Competitiveness Council for an action plan to address the recent loss of competitiveness. Similarly, a group established to address prices has not met for 12 months, despite inflation increasing at a faster rate than the European average.

Ireland imports a substantial number of food products from the United Kingdom. Despite the depreciation in sterling of almost 20% in the past 12 months, prices continue to rise in the shops. As the motion points out, consumers are being ripped off, with prices for many ordinary household goods as much as 25% higher than the price of identical goods in the UK. It is bewildering that the Government continues to sit on its hands and pretend it does not have any responsibility for this matter. If people are being ripped off, we need an effective consumer agency to address the problem.

I do not favour reversion to the type of price controls used in the 1980s. However, a name and shame approach should be adopted to apply pressure on stores to be fair to consumers. The long-term survival of these companies depends on being competitive. If there is a conspiracy of silence which leaves consumers ripped off, it will damage the economy in the long term. The approach of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to the forthcoming talks will be influenced by the sight of rising food prices and the mortgage pressures and erosion in living standards being experienced by young people who form the bulk of active trade union membership. It is the Government's responsibility to address this issue.

The motion is also timely because an ESRI report published today noted significant potential in the economy. although its economic growth projections have been scaled down from a figure of 5%. The critical question is whether we can seize this potential coming off the back of a period during which this country, under the leadership of the Government, surrendered its vital lead in many critical areas. Ireland was once the envy of other countries. Having been leading edge in access to telecoms, we are now at the bottom of the league in critical areas such as broadband. Ireland, once the leading country in Europe in the Government provision of electronic access to services, now languishes at 17th place in the league having failed dismally to implement change. The Government will argue that the knowledge economy is key to the future, despite presiding over circumstances in which the application of the knowledge economy in public services and infrastructure is moving in the opposite direction.

Joined up thinking is required. If the Government expresses ambitions, it must drive forward strategies and policies. The tragedy of this regime is not that it lacked ambition but that in many areas, including its health strategy and decentralisation programme, its ambition was not matched by coherent analysis of the problem. Workable strategies must be developed and driven against hard time lines. Management structures must be established and afforded a genuine opportunity to deliver these key strategies, which should not be driven by people who are trying to accomplish 1,000 other management tasks. Private sector organisations undertaking major change management programmes, such as the decentralisation programme or the climate change or spatial strategies, would not depend on people who answer parliamentary questions and meet ministerial delegations to deliver them. They would establish a dedicated team with a budget and the authority to drive the strategy.

The Government believes it can talk about ambitious climate change and spatial strategies without taking action to deliver them. What is the outcome of this approach? Under the spatial strategy, 500,000 additional homes have been built not in the compact, low energy fashion required, but scattered throughout the country in a way that places high demands on transport and creates major dislocation. This also holds for the Government's strategy on climate change articulated in 2000. In the eight intervening years it made no impact on the challenge facing us.

The economy and environment will be so closely interlocked in the coming years that we will look back and ask how we threw away the opportunity to be an early mover on climate change and why we did not exploit the opportunities to create the infrastructure that could have made Ireland a leading player in turning a challenge into an opportunity. The roots of this failure lie not in the Government not being aware of the problem, but its inability and unwillingness to address it in a coherent manner.

While I admire my colleague from County Meath, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, for putting his hands up and accepting the Government failed to deliver the climate change strategy, it is even worse that, having made this admission, the Government has failed to change the system that caused the problem. Unfortunately, it is highly likely that the mistake will be repeated as the ESRI report indicates the organisation does not believe the Government will deliver the climate change strategy it has set for the coming years. These are critical issues.

Our economy is reaching a critical period in which we must recognise that priorities mean something. One cannot promise everything as the programme for Government does, including more hospital beds, more teachers, less tax and so on. That is no longer realistic. If there is to be a new Government, there must be new hard-headed thinking on what is affordable and on our priorities and how we will change things to deliver them. Sadly, I have not seen that thinking in the first week of this new regime. I see it going back to the old way with a taskforce on this, a commission for that and a review of something else. That will not result in the progress we need.

We are leaving a period in which this Government squandered economic success and did not apply it in a way which would leave us robust. We are seeing the consequences of that which are so admirably explained in this motion.

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