Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Taoiseach talks about managing the economy, yet he has been managing the economy as Minister for Finance since 2004. He has just led the country into a recession. What we need to establish now is what he proposes to do to lead us back out of that recession. There is no point saying it is due to global circumstances. Of all the OECD countries, none of the rest is in a recession, as demonstrated in a survey this month.

The Taoiseach spoke about a correction in the housing market. That was caused by him directly. He was the Minister who made the mess of the stamp duty issue, which changed the slowdown that was happening in housing construction to what the Minister for Finance described last Friday as a shuddering halt. The Minister for Finance is bemoaning his bad luck at having been appointed to succeed the Taoiseach in the Department of Finance. I wonder how he would feel if he was one of the 580 employees of Hibernian Insurance whose jobs are being relocated to Bangalore.

How would he feel if he was an employee of any other company, looking at what is happening in the economy? They may say they saw what was coming in terms of the slowdown in construction and have some understanding of that. They may say too that they can understand manufacturing jobs being relocated for cost reasons and so on. However, we are now seeing the very jobs we thought would be part of the solution to our economic problems, the financial services end or higher end, being relocated as well.

We are in a serious situation. Recessions do not happen every day or year. The last one was 25 years ago and the previous one was in the 1960s. The situation now is serious. Talking about waiting for other forecasts is a bit like waiting for the weather forecast when it is already raining and the storm is already blowing up. The Minister for Finance was on radio today and said that when the mid-year revenue figures are available next week, he will discuss with his colleagues the decisions needed to be taken. I presume the mid-year revenue figures will not come as an entire shock or surprise to him. I presume he, the Taoiseach and the other Members of the Cabinet have a good idea of what the mid-year revenue figures will show. We need to know what corrective measures the Taoiseach is considering taking.

Is the Taoiseach talking about introducing a mini budget? Will we see a new budgetary statement from the Government? When we raised questions on this last week, the Taoiseach threw cold water on them. We need to know the consequences of these figures and the mid-year revenue figures that will be received. Will the Taoiseach make a statement to the House or the country about the state of the public finances and the economy and give people a sense of confidence? We can go on forever blaming the Taoiseach for this but that will not get us very far. We need to know what the Taoiseach will do to get us out of this and he must tell us. The people need to have a sense of confidence that the Government has a handle on this. We need an assurance that the corrective measures will not be applied to those least able to bear them, the poor and the weak in our society.

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