Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the House in this crucial debate where we have an opportunity to put forward ideas. We must also critically assess some of the proposals which have been already floated by Government and try to get to grips with the type of reforms required to get the public finances back on track. More important, in the long term we must examine ways in which we can begin to stimulate our economy and reintroduce a competitive edge to put us back at the centre of Europe in job creation and the opportunities we afford to the people of this country.

It is time for the Government, the public and everybody in political life to get real about the economic tsunami around us. In the last number of months unemployment has exceeded 10% and we face a very real possibility of unemployment reaching almost half a million Irish people by the end of this year, a figure of almost 15%. This is catastrophic and I am very concerned that I am not seeing the Government putting forward any solutions to deal with this calamity or making any effort to explain to the people of Ireland how serious and grave is the situation. Nor is there any serious effort by the Taoiseach and his Ministers to instil any form of confidence in the public as to a plan, solutions or a big idea to get the people of this country out of this crisis.

Our deficit has grown to 9.5% of GDP, which we all know is over three times the acceptable EU limit. Let us remember that these are standards to which we have signed up in the Stability and Growth Pact and of which we have been enthusiastic advocates over the past nine years, since the introduction of the single currency in the eurozone. It is extraordinary. There must be latitude and a certain amount of wriggle room in the parameters of EU rules and regulations when we face an economic crisis such as this. It is extraordinary that we were the example all the central and eastern European new member states looked to as the golden child of the EU, the wonderful example of how to do it right. Clearly, we have fallen to the back of the class and are the prime example of how to get it spectacularly wrong.

There is a number of reasons for this. We are all well versed in the level of mismanagement by the former Ministers for Finance, Deputy Cowen and Mr. Charlie McCreevy, MEP and the type of inflationary budgets we saw during their reigns. The economy had an over-reliance on the building industry and the Government allowed a situation to develop whereby 25% of all revenue into Government coffers was generated by one sector. One does not need to be a doctor of economics to understand the basics. That was a very dangerous strategy and left us far more exposed than any other country. I am tired of listening to the nonsense from the Government, its "get out of jail card", that global forces and the worldwide economic crisis caused the Irish economic crisis. This is untrue. The Government put us in this position by leaving our economy completely exposed.

The second key feature of the gross mismanagement of our economy has been a complete incompetence in managing the public sector. We have seen creeping incompetence growing in our public sector in the past ten or 12 years

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