Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Fine Gael)

I agree with fellow Deputies on this side of the House that Fianna Fáil has blown the boom. Certainly, it has brought us to where we are now, namely, a recession. I agree that there are international factors which have contributed to this situation but the Government has made some really bad and silly decisions which resulted in millions upon millions of taxpayers' money being wasted.

As Deputy McGinley said yesterday, there is a lack of detail in the recovery package. There is no full breakdown of where the €440 million in savings for this year will come from or where the €1 billion in savings for next year will come from. There is no detail on the cutbacks that will be enforced in health and education and no guarantee has been given that front-line services will not suffer. The decision to halt decentralisation is certainly correct. It is a belated recognition of the waste of taxpayers' money on this project. I wonder why this did not happen a lot sooner.

The Government's so-called recovery package does not address the lack of competitiveness in this country. Last week, Deputy Richard Bruton produced a detailed plan entitled Recovery through Reform which contained many key action points on how to deal with the economic crisis facing the county. We need to cut down on avoidable waste and keep prices, particularly food prices, under control and inflation down. We need to change the way our finances are managed. There are many inadequacies and inefficiencies in the way the budget process is dealt with. We need to scrutinise expenditure more regularly than we do at the moment. Our public services need to be reformed and regulated far more.

This Government certainly wasted millions and millions of taxpayers' money. A total of €52 million was wasted on electronic voting machines which will not be used in next year's local and European elections. Yet thousands upon thousands of euro are being squandered each year to keep these machines, which will probably never be used, in storage.

Our Fianna Fáil-led Government has created 250 quangos over the past number of years. The HSE is a bureaucratic nightmare. Deputies who write to the HSE and the Department of Health and Children find that it takes a very time to get a response if they do get one. The downturn in the construction industry over the past number of years has had a devastating effect on this country. A total of 25,000 construction workers are out of work. There has been a record increase in unemployment this year and this is expected to exceed 6% by the end of the year. Unfortunately, 19,000 more people have joined the dole queues between May and June of this year.

There is no detail about reforming the housing market and providing for the thousands of people on social and affordable housing lists who have very little chance of getting a home. If reform had taken place regarding stamp duty in the housing market earlier last year, it might have improved matters for young people. The NDP target for 2007-13 is 17,000 affordable homes but it is hard to see that being delivered. As we face a downturn, the Minister for Finance and the Government have insisted that the NDP projects should be prioritised by undergoing a cost-benefit analysis. It should apply to all projects over €30 million. Unfortunately that is not happening in the case of the Dublin Airport Authority, which avoided doing such a cost-benefit analysis for the new runway, terminal and Pier D projects. Perhaps the Minister can revisit this and prioritise the projects in the NDP. In this way we can see the priorities for the years ahead, particularly at a time when the money has dried up.

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