Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity, even in the brief period of ten minutes, to make some comments on the economy. First, the Taoiseach, in his contribution suggested there was no merit in looking back. I profoundly disagree. He suggested there is little point in looking back at how some of this might have been anticipated or avoided. It is crucial to analyse how precisely we came to be in the position in which we now are. For example, we should analyse how it was, when it was perfectly clear that export performance was changing in early 2006, that no Government response was forthcoming.

Before he leaves the Chamber, I wish to make an immediate reply to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The Labour Party has made a number of highly practical proposals in respect of job creation. Although not much time is available to me, I will give him one that is within the remit of his own Department. When 1,000 people in the local authorities were being given their cards, it was those with shovels or who were on short-term contracts who were told to go. The Minister does not appear to be terribly interested in ending the bonus system or the consultancies before letting go those who were in direct access with, and who provided a service to, the public. That was the case, for example, in County Kildare and several local authorities nationwide. It constituted an indiscriminate fall of the axe on those in short-term contracts and so forth without beginning at the top, as one might expect any socially minded person to do.

I wish to raise some questions because when responding to the economic crisis we are in, it is important to be clear as to what we are doing. There are two paths that one might take. One is a shrinking of the economy in a fairly indiscriminate manner, which would have the consequence of doing much more damage than the irresponsible inflating of the economy by excessive reliance on the building sector. The other is to restructure the economy entirely anew. If one had decent and original thinking, which I have not heard thus far from the Government side, it would concentrate on the shape of the new economy that might be created. The Labour Party will be entirely supportive of such initiatives as will be forthcoming on the Green economy.

However, other aspects of the economy are not featuring in any of the speeches from the Government side and to be practical, I will provide one example. At a time when we were describing ourselves as the wealthiest or second wealthiest country in the world, not to speak of the European Union, we had the second lowest level of social protection within the European Union. If memory serves, Portugal may have been ranked below us. One therefore could, for example, have considered employment creation in the social economy. For instance, when we emerge from the present recession, one would like the shape of the economy to be one in which the world of work has been redefined.

While jobs should be protected and new jobs created in the Green economy, there also are jobs in the social economy. For example, instead of threatening carers with the cutting of their benefit as a form of welfare, their efforts could be included as being work, and should be recognised as such, in a form of the social economy. Moreover, there has been no discussion regarding forms of work sharing in which many people would have been willing to construct social time in a manner that would be more positive in respect of its contribution to the economy.

However, what is opening up, regardless of whether people like it, is a form of the social economy that will offer one option for coming through and out of this recession, which is well on its way to becoming a depression unless we are very careful. If those who have been trapped in cyclical employment become long-term unemployed, it will be a tragedy for the people themselves, their families and their communities.

I refer to the issue upon which we will be tested. When one is invited to a form of national solidarity, or as it is more crudely put for those who like to put it in a parochial sense, to put on the green jersey, one might reasonably ask, solidarity with whom? Is this solidarity to be with the most vulnerable citizens who are threatened or is it to be with the clique and the golden circle that have destroyed the country's reputation? When all the steam is blown away, we are paying between 2.5% and 3% more in terms of interest than the German Government to fund our normal borrowing to run the State. A great contribution in this regard has been the gangster activity of celebrity capitalism. I refer to people who liked to appear on the back pages of the Sunday newspapers, while consuming as though there was no tomorrow. The only competition was the notion of continually bidding up land. There is no point in suggesting this was not important and let me dispose of such a suggestion.

I accept there is an international dimension to a global economy that is reconstructing itself. One version of that is meeting at Davos as though nothing had happened. More than 2,000 people there are wondering how the old show can be got back on the road again without many differences. I note Vincent Browne's reference in today's edition of The Irish Times to the man from the Indian company, who now happens to be in jail, but who last year received an award in London, which I believe was called the Golden Peacock Global Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance. Perhaps our Government, as it meanders through next week and the week after, might bring into existence a Golden Ram or a Golden Tiger. It could hold a competition between the regulator and Seanie for the award. However, the reason it is wrong to imagine that one can simply move on from that point is that these people have destroyed the country and have done incredible damage. This is not simply a rhetorical statement, as it is expressed in percentage points in respect of what is required for the management of the country in a fiscal sense.

This is the choice. One cannot have any solidarity with such people. Part of my party's difficulties in respect of the economic side of this matter is that we do not know the extent to which their connections and claws are in the economy.

While there was an international dimension to the present circumstances in which we find ourselves, we created our own property bubble and this is something for which the Government must take responsibility. Members should remember the advice of our Commissioner in Brussels, which was to party on. He was the most irresponsible Minister for Finance of all time in respect of taxation policy and the shift, for example, from direct taxation to indirect taxation, which affected lower socio-economic groups more than those at the very top. Members should consider the transfer pattern at the time when the economy was flying. They need not accept my word in this regard as they can examine a series of different sources. The transfers were to the top quintile. While there was a lift in some different areas in an absolute sense, proportionately, the beneficiaries were located nearer the top. If that is the case, every adjustment in respect of wages, levies, job losses and so forth should concentrate on where the benefits flowed.

However, there is no evidence of this in anything Members have heard thus far. For example, there is a huge difference between somebody who regards it as vulgar to say he or she gets a salary, and others. If one is in the banking circles to which I have pointed, they regard it as compensation. One must get compensation of €3 million per annum to get out of bed and go off gambling in the bank. Regarding these gamblers in the banks, in many cases there is no evidence of from where any of that money will be clawed back.

Another example is what is being said about those who own different forms of property. Very few people I know confined themselves to a second house when they went into that area. They were actually getting into double figures. Why is the proposal floated in the newspaper not addressing the issue of the third, fourth, fifth and on up to the tenth and even the twentieth house? It is extraordinary. It would have been obvious from the different attempts, including those of the Labour Party, to try to bring forward a version of the Kenny report on what was happening in this property bubble. One was getting a growth rate — a continued climbing — at a time when exports were stable and falling, which meant that one was effectively revaluing the property base of the economy.

There will be a demand for all of us to become involved in positive suggestions, both in terms of the role of citizens and the nature of work, but particularly on social protection, although we will all be judged by the following fundamental test — with what did we have solidarity? Was it with something entirely new, a version of the social economy about which we can have a real political division, involving, on the one side, market economics unrestrained and, on the other, a social economy that expresses solidarity with citizens and is biased in favour of those most vulnerable and in the lower socio-economic groups? Frankly, the latter offers the best prospect for a sustainable economy for future generations. A more equal society offers the best prospect for economic growth, as the Scandinavian economies have shown. That is where we need to be, not protecting people who have been little less than traitors to the Irish people.

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