Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

With the exception, perhaps, of budget speeches, no statement from a Taoiseach has been as much awaited as that of the Taoiseach today. For some time, the country has been waiting to hear what the Government will do to deal with the economic crisis and the state of our public finances. We were expecting the major statement last week but we did not receive it because the Taoiseach said he was going to do it his way and that he was engaged in talks with the social partners. We now know the talks with the social partners came to an end late last night or early this morning. Everybody has waited for the Taoiseach to make the statement to the House about the momentous decisions the Government has made to deal with the state of the public finances.

People listening today who are concerned about their jobs or businesses or who, perhaps, have lost jobs and want to know when they are likely to get one back, or who are considering all the speculation of recent weeks and asking what it means for their family budgets, have got no answers. There is nothing in what the Taoiseach has said today that tells people how the proposal will impact upon their jobs, businesses or income.

What the Taoiseach has given us is what we already know. We know the Government has set out to reduce public expenditure by €2 billion this year. We know also, from the document the Government has submitted to the European Commission, that it is not the full story and that there must also be a reduction of €4 billion next year and the following year, €3.5 billion the year thereafter and €3 billion the year after that again. People want a sense of where the proposal is to lead and what it means in practical terms. We still do not know. In effect, the Taoiseach has told the House and the country nothing that we did not know already. What we do know or what we have seen is a certain amount of speculation and leaks in the newspapers about what this means in practice. The big information — it is not news today — is the idea of the pension levy. Figures have been speculated about over the course of the past 12 hours, in particular since the breakdown of the social partnership talks that set out what the Taoiseach calls the "graduated" way in which the pension levy will be applied.

If those reports are correct then let me try to translate what all of that means for a public servant such as a garda, a nurse or a teacher on an income of €45,000 per year. They are already paying approximately €5,000 of that income, between PRSI, pension contributions, health levies and income levies. What that proposal will mean — not that the Taoiseach has given us the figures, but if the figures that are reported in the media are correct — is that such a person will pay an additional €3,375. That is approximately €8,500 from the pay of a person in the workforce for approximately ten years before she pays tax, child care or her mortgage.

What she wants to know, and what the Taoiseach has not provided an answer for, is for what is she paying that. She did not create the problem. She did not borrow money from a bank to buy shares in the same bank. She is not somebody who drinks champagne in the hospitality suites of racecourses. She is just somebody who has gone out to work every morning, worked hard, tried to make a living, rear a family and provide for herself. All she wants is a modest standard of living. She understands that the country has economic problems at the moment and that there is a need for everybody to put their shoulder to the wheel. She is prepared to do that as well but she wants her Government to level with her and the Taoiseach has not done that today.

The first problem is that he has not spelled out the details of what he is going to do. Second, he has dealt only with the issue for the current year. We are talking about €2 billion over the course of 2009. What will the Taoiseach do in 2010? If he has to double that amount in 2010, as his own figures state he will do, where will he get the money then? How much more of a pension levy will he apply? What extra taxes will he impose? What services will he cut? If the only place the Taoiseach is looking to address this crisis is on the expenditure side then he is leading the country into a downward spiral that will only make the problem worse.

That is where the Labour Party has its biggest fundamental difference with the way the Government is dealing with the country's economic problems and with the public finances at the moment, namely, that it is fixated solely with the public expenditure side and that it is not addressing the need to generate employment, get the economy moving, get people spending and get revenues buoyant again. The Government has created all of the uncertainty because of the delay and the fact that it is constantly playing catch up with the economy. It has been playing catch up since the beginning of 2008. The turn in the economy did not happen overnight; it has been coming since the beginning of 2008. The Government failed to deal with it. As recently as just before the summer the Government was still in denial about what was happening with the economy. The best it could do in July was to announce that it would cut €440 million from public expenditure.

The Taoiseach denied in this House on foot of a Labour Party motion that there was a real problem in the economy and he hared off for the summer recess, a period when 40,000 jobs were lost, and then he came back with the big idea that he would bring the budget forward to October. He brought the budget forward to October but he did not get it right. We then had the banking crisis, following which the Government introduced one measure in September, and there have been five different attempts to deal with the problem in the Irish banks since then. We still do not have a full recapitalisation programme for the Irish banks.

In the meantime the economy is in a state of suspension. People are not spending. They do not know what the future will be for their businesses. They do not know whether they will get credit from banks or what banks will be there to provide them with credit or what kind of supports will be provided. They know there is a problem with the public finances and they look to Government to address that. What has the Government done in recent months? It has dithered. The social partnership talks did not start until after Christmas when it was manifestly clear that things were going the wrong way in terms of the pay agreement that was reached in September. It was certainly clear after the budget that there would be a requirement for talks with the social partners. The Government did not start the talks until after Christmas. It ran it up until the eleventh hour before it put its proposals on the table and it imposed a deadline. What did the Government expect? Of course, it was not going to get agreement on them.

The Taoiseach is missing an opportunity. The people are ready to put their shoulder to the wheel to get our economy out of its current difficulty. People understand the problems we face and they want to do something about it but they expect leadership from the Taoiseach and the Government. Time and again the Taoiseach has disappointed in failing to provide that leadership. The country expected the Taoiseach to come to the House to announce details of the Government's decision. The country expected him to have a roadmap, not just about how he would deal with the public finances for 2009 but about how he would get us to the point in 2013 when the public finances would be back in order. People expected to hear about how we were going to move the economy from a situation where we are losing jobs at an enormous rate to one where we could start creating jobs again.

People expected to get an idea about how it would affect their lives if they lost a job and what measures would be in place. There is no point in saying to them that €150 million is available for training. They need to know what losing their job would mean in practical terms; what would happen, where the courses are and the means by which they can re-train, upskill and get back into the workforce again. We are not getting that information from the Taoiseach. He has missed an opportunity. He has a country that is willing to play its part. People in all walks of life — the private sector, the public sector, people everywhere — are willing to play their part in getting the country moving again. The problem is the Taoiseach is not providing the leadership or the roadmap and he has not done it today. In fact, all he has done is added to the uncertainty, confusion and difficulty.

I hope we will have an opportunity when we come to Leaders' Questions to tease out some of the things the Taoiseach listed in today's statement. He certainly has not contributed to solving the country's problems today. His statement is a big disappointment that will have added more to the uncertainty and climate of despair in many cases that people are now beginning to feel, rather than what it needed to do, which was to give people a lift, and a sense that the Taoiseach has a handle on the problem and that he was going to lead us out of it.

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