Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I propose to share time with Deputy Sherlock. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill but my disappointment is due to the absence of a clear connection to the economy. Deputies on all sides have described the challenges the economy faces, not least in the potential to exceed 7.5% unemployment and perhaps an increase in unemployment next year and the following year. It is only reasonable that the main thrust would be in terms of the employment potential of the Bill in terms of employment protection or employment creation.

Regarding employment protection, we are not well served by those scapegoating the public service. I regard those who work in the public service with admiration. I was a Minister and know the differences that exist in the public service. A small army of people are in grades such as clerical officer up to principal officer, some of whom earn wages that qualify them for family income supplement. There are significant gaps in wages as one goes from higher executive officer to principal officer to assistant secretary to Secretary General. Talented people who decide, rather than working for themselves or private corporations, to work for the public service have my admiration. I regard it as cowardly of those who want to see a different kind of public service that they will not specify what change they would make.

I would make a change. We need a new economy, a new banking system and a different version of the public service. The public service is not well served as we move into conditions of change by having inflexibility, authoritarianism, hierarchy, excessive rules and so forth. We need to take that out and to examine the different quality of interaction at the time of a collapsed economy, which is anxious to recover, and previous good times. It is not acceptable to go into an office where people are registering as unemployed — as we heard on a radio programme recently — where there are five hatches, only two of which are open, with people drinking tea in the background. They are entitled to drink their tea but then, in time, they open the hatch and it is time to put on the hatchet face for the public. That is not acceptable. The degree to which morale in the public service is being reduced and attacked is serious. This is a time at which it needs to be reconfigured.

I turn to the pathetic connection between this Bill and the needs of the economy. The position in which the Irish economy finds itself is very different from the position of the British economy. It is different in so far as the British economy has the option to spend, in a rather Keynesian way, its way back to what it believes will be economic progress. In the case of Ireland, we have gone from a surplus in the national accounts just two years ago, to the second highest projected deficit in the EU; it will be the highest if the projections are taken as a proportion of GDP although I do not have the time to give detailed figures. I am not being anti-national in this.

What could have been done? The Government could have returned the national development plan and subjected it to an employment test and driven such capital expenditure as would have taken up the slack in, among other areas, the construction industry by addressing all of the schools in band 1.1. Granted, it would not have received the stamp duty it had during the housing boom. The largest contraction in sales is in respect of building materials such as furniture, glass and lamps as reported by The Economist intelligence unit. My suggestion would take up these secondary effects and there would be a better multiplier because the expenditure would be regionalised. One would not receive stamp duty but would create a good effect in the economy. There is nothing in the Bill in this respect but there is much droning on about the expenditure for an approved school building. No statement is being made that the national plan is being reconfigured to do certain things.

The Green Party might like the following suggestion and I am amazed it is not pushing it more strongly. I welcome the research and development references in the Bill. These are positive but I would prefer if they were connected to a real strategy in terms of the sustainable economy, the green economy, re-insulation, the retrofit of houses and the return to different estates. These are good, solid expenditure items that would justify borrowing at any time because one is creating the capacity for recovery.

I do not understand how it can be helpful to double the amount of time one must wait. If one interrupted one's education, as many did, to enter the construction industry and one wants to get back to education, it is now twice as hard. There are ridiculous little rules about people dragging themselves through local authorities to get a utility bill to prove one was not living at home for the previous 12 months. If one happens to be in a flat where the landlord is paying the electricity and the ESB, one is done for. The authorities will not accept driving licences, bank statements or phone bills. Utility bills must be provided. When did God make utility bills a requirement of any scheme? That is the kind of unimaginative, deadly stuff in the Bill.

Returning to education is one example where people will be faced with problems but there is a string of others. I feel sorry for those in public service whose lives are ruined by little meaningless rules so that they must turn themselves into ritualists. We in the political end of the spectrum have not given any direction.

I refer to what has preceded this Finance Bill, namely, our discussion on the banking sector. No one can make any progress on building a new economy, with a high employment content, without admitting what went wrong. The truth is there was an international credit crisis but within it there is a homegrown, crafted, carefully planned — over several McCreevy budgets — property bubble that we put within the credit bubble. I agree with Deputy Calleary, who referred to small builders. These builders put one brick on another, know the square footage of a house and know about slates. They are not those who got the big benefits. Those who got the benefit were pure speculators. The Government supported the speculative version of the economy that has nearly brought us all to ruin. Therefore, the banking system that stood behind it, like people blowing air into a fire, are the same people to whom people are now turning for help. For example, when the Labour Party was anxious to protect people's bank deposits and suggested a figure of €70 million, the Government did better and suggested €100 million. I welcome that but I do not welcome giving a blanket guarantee to the banking system that is now bleeding dry all its previous customers by looking for special charges for the renegotiation of term loans, freezing term loans, calling in overdrafts and so forth.

This House spent all night talking about solvency but the issue now is liquidity. There are people throughout the country who are worried about their jobs, and there are many decent employers who want to keep their employees but they are being crucified by banks.

There is nothing in this Finance Bill to indicate there will be relief. Instead of that, and it is the worst scenario of all, into the scene I have described is emerging the private consortium of Mallabraca containing as it does the Carlisle Group, famous for hit and run asset stripping activities everywhere it has invested.

On the question of the National Pensions Reserve Fund or the work of the National Treasury Management Agency, if it is profitable for Mallabraca to come into the Irish banking system and remain for five years, why would it not be appropriate for Irish funds to do that with the guarantees and the social responsibility of enhancing liquidity? Instead, we have Mallabraca, with its Carlisle Group that has such luminaries as President George H. Bush, former Secretary of State Baker, Frank Carlucci and so on and is the tenth largest US defence contractor as it happens by sheer serendipity due to the board.

I want to be consistent. I have said in this House that the NTMA should examine the question of investing in armaments. I have said that the National Pensions Reserve Fund should be careful about its investments and yet one of the leading funding groups, with its $160 billion fund, that funds armaments and is the tenth largest contractor for defence spending in the United States is coming into the Bank of Ireland. Does any Member of this House believe that kind of thinking will revitalise or make safe a single job or create a job in any village or town in Ireland?

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