Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I will return to it. If there is flexibility in that case, I welcome it. However, how can it be progressive to increase class sizes? One might say that this is what we can afford. The Minister of State can disagree with me if he wishes, but I want to be practical about the matter. If the Government wanted to have some kind of citizenship that would be positive, it would have put a rights ring around certain categories of the population — children in education and the elderly. It would have used education for this reason. If I accepted the Minister of State's logic, young people are going into an economic space where it will be far more difficult to get employment. It will be more insecure employment and they will change jobs far more often during their lives. Therefore, they will need more personal, social and professional skills. It makes sense to invest in education. For those who are losing their jobs, it makes sense to reduce the obstacles on the social welfare side to enable people to get back to education. That did not happen. It also made sense to have upskilling. There is a series of things I could mention. The budget fell indiscriminately on an entire category of people.

It is very interesting to give an example of an uncaring bureaucracy in my limited time. The elderly are not getting a hit for the first time. Regarding the handover of responsibility for the special housing aid for the elderly scheme from the HSE to local authorities, I was informed on 19 September 2008 about the western side of things. Initially the local authorities claimed to be responsible for the physical side of adapting a house, but nothing else to do with elderly care. The HSE letter stated:

During these meetings we outlined the number of staff involved in administering the scheme, methods used by us in assessing the applications? We informed them that we received 468 applications in 2008 of which 100 are for the City? There are 387 applications outstanding. We also explained that our current financial resources have been committed for 2008. Additionally we provided details of our Community Employment schemes. [It wanted to maintain them.]

Both Local Authorities explained that they currently have no funds available to administer the scheme and would not be in a position to accept any of our applications. In fact, Galway County Council asked us to accept 270/280 applications from them. This was refused in view of the current pressures.

At present we have ceased accepting all Applications and are referring applicants to Galway City and County Councils even though we are aware that they do not have the resources available.

The letter is signed by the local HSE representative. What way is that to treat elderly people at the very bottom of the pile? What did these people want? They wanted a downstairs toilet. They wanted to be able to wash themselves — basic requirements. The issue of the medical card was just a symptom of how elderly people are not regarded as a category of citizens that should be ring-fenced in terms of rights for the sake of security for the elderly. The same is true of the other end. Irrespective of the government in power, it should be investing in education not just for the economy, but also to have a kind of citizenship that is caring, has values of inclusion, avoids all of the different attacks we have seen on the social fabric and so forth. The budget missed all that.

I refer to the admissions that have been made. President Sarkozy referred to the necessity for another Bretton Woods Agreement to stabilise international finance. The reality is that what he is not saying is that the old game has failed. Hundreds of economists have written subscribing to the liberal model of the Washington consensus that emanated in the University of Chicago where a tower will be erected shortly to Milton Friedman. That model has brought the world to its knees financially to a point rather like that addressed by John Maynard Keynes in his time. There is need for a new international institution to stand alongside the IMF and the World Bank but it should deal with hot money, speculative money and the drugs money flowing through the system and it should be built on a social model.

The future of politics, which is very interesting, is between those in the Cato Institute who argue that the last thing they want is regulation and those who want regulation to achieve a social economy. The beauty of Europe in its time was that we might have had a region with a set of economies that would advance the social model and stand against the other regions that wanted unregulated labour markets and to drive social protection down, which is important.

Those of us who have been involved in development aid and so on visit and observe countries now and again. At the same time speculation was taking place in the international economy, neat agglomerations were managing to construct conditions of oligopoly and monopoly. I attended the world hunger meeting in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham last week. In the food sector, five companies control 90% of the world's grain trade, six companies control 80% of the world's pesticide market, three companies control 85% of the world's team market, two companies control 50% of the world trade in bananas, three companies control 80% of the confectionery market and, most important, the media have been monopolised. We have, therefore, a bad economic model internationally, which has failed, compliant economists who are stuck with one model and media, which are monopolised such that through Fox Television and Berlusconi one will hear the same failed song all the time.

World poverty will result. When one comes to the quality of the debate about economics domestically, people think it is a casual consequence that there are such things as good times and bad times. Good times mean there is no difference between a time as far back as 2001-02 when the Government was exporting and sustaining an economic growth rate and the current time in which exports have disappeared and become expensive for a number of reasons. The Government continued to claim a growth rate when it was revaluing the property base of the entire country and when, in five budgets in a row, it transferred benefits worth hundreds of millions of euro to people to continue the speculative madness that put housing out of the reach of ordinary people but created vast personal fortunes.

I refer to measures that could have been taken and, in particular, one that has not been mentioned so far. With regard to multiple house ownership, the person who has acquired an additional house will be charged €200 and an employee who is provided with a parking space by his or her employer will be also charged €200. Why not increase the charge for a second house to €400 and make it geometric for the third, fourth and fifth houses until over a five-year period an owner of seven or eight houses would face a penalty of 60% or 70% if necessary? That would release housing units into the market and reduce their price, thereby helping people in the housing market and it would have been a hell of a lot better than saying to those who tore the heart out of the economy on a speculative basis, "Is there anything we can give you now to keep you in business?" While the problem emanated abroad, we had our own problem and it was dealt with disgracefully. We must not allow the old and the young to carry the burden of reconstruction. That must fall on those who created the problem.

See this speech in context