Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity of contributing to the debate, even if I am confined to five minutes. I find this process entirely unsatisfactory for analysing the position in which we find ourselves in the economy and any strategy we might adopt.

I support the remarks just made by Deputy Howlin on overseas development aid. We have moved from a commitment to provide 0.55% of GNP two years ago to 0.53% now. If one wanted to make the cuts announced proportionate across the board, the cut in ODA is €38 million more than anything else. It has carried more than its share, even of the most unjustifiable cuts, and affects the poorest of the poor.

I want to take up an issue raised in the contributions I have just heard from speakers on the Government side. The word "empirical" was used by the Minister of State but what is empirical? Just over a year ago the National Pensions Reserve Fund was worth €21 billion. I recall the debates on the fund in previous Dáilanna. The Labour Party was once attacked for suggesting we should lean on it to fund school, road and crucial infrastructural projects. Across society it was said we must not touch the fund. Last year it lost €5 billion. The people who presided over that loss received a fee payment of €20 million. Of the €16 billion remaining, half is required for the recapitalisation of the banks in circumstances in which we do not know the extent of the asset exposure of the banks. That is empirical. At the same time, a person working in the public service whose income and family circumstances means he or she qualifies for family income supplement will lose twice as much under the income levy as he or she is receiving in family income supplement. These are facts.

Not a single group has been moved from the top echelons of the celebrity culture of speculation put in place in the boardrooms of the banks. It is a great scandal that in interviews our independent media will ask the people concerned if they are distressed or upset and if they will continue on, to which they will reply they intend to go on as they are. The Government has done nothing to call to account this group which damaged the reputation of Ireland for this and future generations. Those looking on are asking about the quality of the arguments that allow the people concerned to stay in place. The Government should not insult our intelligence by suggesting any of us who has spent a lifetime in politics does not know the importance of a banking system but what we want is a credible system. We do not want a system that rewards itself disproportionately, even in the worst of times, that refuses to call its income "income" but "compensation", and that, even as the Government is attacking the public service, continues to issue bonuses and privileges to those in the boardroom. County and city managers are constructing schedules of workers who are to be let go. We should begin with those who are on the road but they still keep the racket of paying bonuses going. Consultancy fees were not the first to go.

Why is this happening? It is happening because the media, when it was building up to this, did not point out that public servants were already contributing to their pensions. Even as late as yesterday evening, on the 6 p.m. news, RTE could not get it right. It did not point out that the new levy on income — that is what it is because there are people who are not drawing pensions and will not draw one who will be paying the levy — was additional to what they were paying. Thus, for weeks the notion was built that there was something wrong with the worker who chose to work in the public realm——

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