Seán Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)

I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute on this motion on the economy. We have been used to significant growth rates, averaging 5% to 6% year on year over the past decade. We were used to new initiatives and many of our expectations have been met with regard to infrastructural and other projects.

Householders with a constant increase in real wages could aspire to a new flat screen television or to remodelling the kitchen. However, without an increase in wages we must review and consolidate our position and work towards the future when the increase will come about. We could use hire purchase or consumer loans and suffer the burden of debt and borrowing but this would not be prudent and most would agree it would be the wrong thing to do.

Ireland is in this position. It used to have growth rates of 5% to 6% but circumstances, largely beyond our control and I will return to them in a moment, have brought us to a situation where temporarily our growth rate has been reduced considerably. As a nation, we must reduce our expectations and become more efficient, less costly, improve our competitiveness and position ourselves to take advantage of the situation when the world economy improves and this, all commentators agree, will happen in the short term rather than the long term.

I stated certain circumstances were beyond our control and I want to reiterate this because it all started in 2007 with subprime mortgages in the United States, which were normally securitised and packaged as a product to financial institutions throughout the world. Many of these subprime mortgages suddenly became bad and thereby all of the securities based on them became bad.

See this speech in context