John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)

The necessary adjustments must be made. We must decide what we will do and we must show leadership. What we have done here in the past few days is set out our stall for the remainder of the year, how the Departments will function and how we will prepare for the budget that must be delivered at the end of this year. In that context, I will not refer to any politician but to business people and use the example of Enterprise Ireland. In the course of 2007 when things were going bad on the global markets, it was able to generate €13 billion worth of exports. It broke all the records it had set to be achieved. While it set the trend and the policy, it was Irish businesses that achieved €13 billion worth of exports. Irish businesses went to that global market and were successful. In the start of the first quarter of this year as they entered the Latin American market, they proved they can perform just as well out there, gaining €15 million worth of business in one trade mission. That is not Fianna Fáil or the Government telling the House that, but Irish business saying it can trade abroad, be successful and competitive and it knows what it is doing. I encourage Enterprise Ireland with those companies to continue to do that because those companies represent 154,000 jobs in the Irish economy, all of whom are paying taxes.

The Opposition can say what it likes about developers who made money in the boom time, they also contributed through their taxes. I am not defending them, but a balance needs to be understood. They also paid into every local authority through their charges and gave significant gains to local authorities, which passed those gains on to community projects. They made it worthwhile for the communities that local councillors represent. Maybe we should have caught them much earlier and got much more from them, but they did all that, gave employment and paid their taxes, so let us recognise the contribution they made.

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