Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I am sure the Acting Chairman, Deputy Cregan, is tired of listening to Government spokespeople coming in here to make announcements. I have heard many such plans in the past 11 years, but none of them has come to fruition. I do not believe the measures outlined by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance yesterday will come to pass. They will unravel with the passing of time, not over the years, but over days.

My old friend, the Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, used to speak about breaking open the champagne. I do not know how the Government managed to move from the champagne-opening era to the gruel-stirring era. It did not happen in a flash — if one glances casually at the speeches made by Deputy Bruton in recent years, one will learn that signs of economic concern were there to be observed. If the members of the Government were working as lighthouse keepers, they would have been sacked a long time ago as we would have had many shipwrecks.

The Taoiseach made three main blunders when he was Minister for Finance. First, he introduced inflationary budgets which meant that current spending was running at two and a half times the rate of growth of the economy. Second, he sanctioned an increase in day-to-day expenditure which was politically motivated for electoral purposes. The increase, which killed our competitiveness and, accordingly, led to a dramatic reduction in export levels, was financed by unsustainable property taxes. Third, he failed to make any reform decisions and abandoned value-for-money discipline. These three errors gave rise to what I call "Cyclone Clara", which left a trail of destruction in its wake. The rate of GDP growth reduced by 5.7%, the general government balance, as a percentage of GDP, decreased by 3% and the rate of unemployment increased by 1.3%. That is what we got from Cyclone Clara in the past four years. Like St. Peter at the Garden of Gethsemane, the Government fell asleep on its watch. Unlike St. Peter, however, it has not awoken.

Some €35 million was wasted on the vanity project that was Media Lab Europe, with nothing to show for it but some empty buildings on the quays of Dublin. Some €19 million was wasted on unused accommodation for asylum seekers. There was an overrun of €201 million on pre-1953 pensions. It is unfortunate that the great futurologist and philosopher, the Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, who introduced that scheme, has left the Chamber. When one mentions other wastes of money, such as the Stadium Ireland project and the Dublin Port tunnel, one feels like one is reading the rolling credits from a horror movie. The Government has failed to reform the public service and to complete the decentralisation programme. I spoke once to the former Minister, the late Séamus Brennan — may the Lord have mercy on him — after we had appeared on "Prime Time". When I asked him when the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism would be relocated to Killarney, he told me he hoped it would happen by 2012. He was a realistic politician, God be good to him. The decentralisation proposals are the greatest scam ever perpetrated on this State, destroying efficiency. I instance the moving of 30 or more employees of Bord Bia to Enniscorthy when ten or more of them were working abroad. There was no thought to it and it was a complete political sham.

With respect to the cutback of €45 million to Irish Aid, the Government will argue that we are still on target for 0.54 of GNP this year, with the hope of reaching 0.7 in 2012. However, due to the ineptitude of the Government the most vulnerable people on the planet will be short of €45 million this year. That is the cutback in real terms without reference to an improved health service. I note that the Minister of State, Deputy Power, is entering the Chamber. We are talking about putting food in the stomachs of people and basic health requirements, which are affected by the loss of the €45 million.

The Fine Gael spokesperson on finance will outline the measures proposed by our party which he has termed "Through recovery to reform". We envisage cutting the growth of day-to-day spending to 4%, requiring all Departments and agencies to find a saving of 1%, and cutting back on the 250 new quangos created by Fianna Fáil in the past decade. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle will not sleep lightly in his bed tonight, thinking of that figure.

I spoke to an individual recently who told me he had visited the offices of a Department of State. He went into the canteen at 10 a.m. and found it packed. At 10.45 a.m. not one person had left it. That is the reform we have in the public service. What are the legacies the Taoiseach will leave us? The housing crash. Since 2005, 100,000 house owners have moved into a situation of negative equity, we have the slowest rate of growth since 1983, the biggest balance of payments deficit in the history of the State, the highest rate of unemployment in a decade, with 50,000 extra workers out of a job since December last year, and the biggest deterioration of public finances in the history of the State, from boom to bust, from champagne to gruel. It is sad because in this society the vulnerable will suffer.

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