Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

Having this format of debate is unique, but we are not living in normal times. To have budget statements before the budget is even produced or before we know the contents of the budget or its target and how the Government intends to reach that target is unusual. However, as I said, we are living in unusual times and in a time of crisis. That time of crisis must be addressed on several fronts. More than anything, one of the fundamentals of any economy is confidence. Unfortunately, in the present crisis the people no longer have confidence in the Government to bring us out the other side, which is unfortunate. I believe the economy can be turned around and that the Government should make every effort to turn it around. As we speak the people have lost confidence in the Government which means one of the fundamentals is now in shatters. We cannot get past this crisis unless we deal with the banks — it is as simple as that. The banks were not just reckless but treasonous in their approach to the economy. When bankers start to become gamblers, serious problems arise, and that is what happened in this country.

I have said it before and I will say it again; we had one of the most conservative banking industries in the world. We had a banking industry that would nearly ask one to sign over one's house as collateral for a very small loan. While we all complained about that in the past, and in many ways it was too strict, what happened afterwards was definitely something of which we should have been conscious and should never have allowed to happen.

We are now looking at a daily crisis. We awake to a new bad news story every single morning. Yet, the people who were responsible are still in situ. There have been just two resignations and these happened only under tremendous pressure. Through all of this, the people who got us into this position have continued to hold their positions, have continued to take salaries that to the majority of people are fantasy money, and continue to give themselves bonuses, for what I do not know. All we hear is that the Minister for Finance will be speaking to them — in polite terms, I am sure. The deference they feel they are due will be given, although it should not be. We have completely guaranteed our banking system. As a Government and a democracy, we should now have a say in how the finances of this country are run. If we do not have a banking system in which we have confidence, one that is properly regulated and one we can rely on and be assured is run in a proper manner, this economy will simply not turn around.

I heard recently that the property portfolio of the entire country was valued at €40 billion in 1986. Some 20 years later, in 2006, it was valued at €554 billion. That cannot not make sense in any man's language. Our individual wealth did not increase so much as to suggest the value of our property could have increased that much.

Day after day, I listen to Government backbenchers and Ministers who tell us, as the Taoiseach did this morning, that we are in the middle of an international economic crisis, which we are — the financial crisis has affected everyone. However, as a nation, we have not taken on any foreign toxic debt, nor has our banking system. What we have is an international financial crisis and underneath it we inserted a property bubble. That bubble burst, which is why we are suffering more than other countries.

One would imagine that if we were all suffering, other countries might suffer more than us but they are not. Per head of population, we are suffering more than other countries as a result of a tax-fuelled, Government-driven property bubble that was the equivalent of a pyramid scheme which we all knew was going to collapse — one would want to be a fool not to believe that. We were told this time and again but the Government said "no" and told us to party on. The rest of us were all doom and gloom, naysayers and pinkos. However, that is where we are now. What this country now needs is not historians but visionaries but, unfortunately, I do not see them on the Government benches.

It is usual during budget debates to suggest the Government has not done enough for one group or has done too much for another — this is the normal cut and thrust of budget contributions. This budget is unusual in that we are having the contributions beforehand. The Government says it will take them on board and while perhaps I am a little too long in the game to believe it, that is as may be.

The loss of every job costs us €20,000 and it is now estimated that there are 320,000 unemployed, with 26,000 more people on the live register in February alone. I do not believe that figure because it is far more than that, and the reason for this relates to a group I want to discuss. During the madness that we called the Celtic tiger, we forced an entire section of the population to become employers. Principal companies decided to no longer employ their workers. Due to the way our taxes were structured, it made far more economic and tax sense for those companies to tell their employees that they needed to go on a C2 or C35. The workers would then be employing themselves and were completely responsible for their own liabilities. The company would supply the workers and the materials for them to keep doing the job they were doing originally, but the company would no longer have any responsibility towards them.

There are thousands of such people out there. They were not the big developers who bought the Ballsbridge sites of this world or the big speculators who speculated on the currencies of other countries. These were ordinary people who did well when everyone was doing well and went on to employ others. These people are now unemployed, unregistered, unofficial and not protected by the redundancy schemes, social welfare or anyone. We must do something about this. We cannot continue to talk about the macro picture unless we begin to look at the human tragedy which is this crisis. These people are at the doors of community welfare officers but these officers have not received additional help and are under such strain that they are working late into the evening and are having to turn away people or adjust in some way in order to meet the crisis.

No one is talking about this crisis but it is one this budget must account for. We found money for the bankers, the developers and many others and we now need to find money for the people who find themselves in danger of losing their homes and families, and who have nothing to live on, week after week. In order to even be registered as unemployed when one is on a C2 or C35, one must have a tax clearance certificate but the Revenue Commissioners are now six weeks behind in this regard. These people saw this crisis coming a year ago and, as a result of the effort to keep going, in some instances they have outstanding tax bills. However, they should never have been in that category in the first place. It was the Government which put the system in place in order to force these people to be entrepreneurs when they never wanted that. They wanted to be employed to do a job and to build the infrastructure this country needed. We are now leaving them out there in limbo. If the Government does nothing else in this budget other than to look at the human tragedy behind it, I plead with it to do that.

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