James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I ask the Ceann Comhairle to tell me when I have reached five minutes.

This is the greatest financial crisis this country has faced since the foundation of the State. The startling unemployment figure of 328,000 people, the greatest number ever, is just another reminder of the stark reality facing so many of our citizens.

The sad thing about this is that it was seen coming. Commentators have been warning about it for at least two years and yet we were told by the current Taoiseach that all was well and the fundamentals of the economy were sound. However, the fundamentals have not been sound for some time. During ten years of an unprecedented boom we went from the fourth most competitive economy in the world to being way down the list.

This Government managed the startling feat of turning a surplus of €2 billion into a €22 billion deficit. Fianna Fáil squandered the boom and shunned the opportunity to reform our public service through benchmarking. Consequently we are very poorly placed to deal with the world recession. I agree that we need to save €2 billion and need incisive action but what is happening here is yet again a blunt instrument has been used and it is aimed purely at public pay cuts. What will happen next year when we will have to save €4 billion? Will there be more public pay cuts? I do not think so.

The HSE is an example of a burgeoning, bungling bureaucracy that is not delivering efficiency. We pour more and more money into it and yet we get fewer and fewer services. A total of 500 beds went out of the system last year, 600 will go this year and there is a 30% increase in delayed discharges, which has the same effect as having the Mater Hospital closed for a year. There has been a 10% increase in cancelled operations, there are 50 people lying in the accident and emergency department on trolleys in Beaumont Hospital and the list goes on. The health service is in a mess due to inefficiencies and lack of management, yet we are discussing whether or not its CEO should receive a bonus.

Where is the reform of the banks? We have seen this Government wait for the banks to come to it with a solution. We are the ones who are bailing them out, therefore we are the ones who should be dictating. This Government should be leading from the front telling the Banks the way it will be.

There should be a complete cull of the entire board of directors of any bank that has been bailed out because if these are the people that led us into this mess, they are not the people to get us out of it. New directors should be appointed who will dictate more reasonable salaries for the bosses and get rid of the nonsensical bonus system which only really appeals to short-term thinking and greed and is one of the reasons we are in this sorry mess.

The era of cronyism and golden handshakes has got to end. I do not have much faith in this Government's ability to do it as it has been at the centre of it for the last 20 years. How is it that a banker who has, in my view, been guilty of serious breaches of company law can walk away with a half a million pension having inflicted such enormous damage on his own bank and on the entire banking system?

The ordinary person in the street is asking why, when they are earning €15,000 a year, are they paying a 3% levy on their pension whilst this man walks away with half a million euro. These are the sort of inequities in Irish life that lead to civil unrest. This whole area brings into question the role of regulators, their ability to regulate and the whole ethos of turning a blind eye.

We are not addressing the need for reform in either the public or private sector, nor are we addressing the need to stimulate the economy. What has this Government done? It has increased 17 different taxes, the most ridiculous of which was increasing VAT. Has it not heard of the law of diminishing returns? There has been a drop of €365 million in VAT collected in January 2009 compared to January 2008.

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