Cyprian Brady (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

We now have third-level institutions, financial services centres, new housing, schools and colleges. This Bill is about providing those changes for people. Despite the recent losses, we have 600,000 more people in employment than we had ten years ago. They are 600,000 families and individuals who, ten or 15 years ago would not have had a job and a house. We had generations of that. We have doubled our exports over the last ten years. This Bill is about the management of where we go and what we do now.

Changes have taken place, particularly in the employment market. The costs of doing business in Ireland have increased, but so have wages and profits, and employment conditions have improved. Companies have come here from all over the world to take advantage of the situation we have had for the last ten or 12 years. Nobody can say we have not managed to attract our fair share of foreign direct investment when one considers the competition not just from Europe but throughout the world.

For many years I have listened to people denigrate developers and business people solely because they took advantage of the economic conditions of the last ten years. These are Irish people who took a chance, set up a business and took advantage of it. They employ Irish people and we should make no apology for supporting those people and ensuring they were in a position to do business.

See this speech in context