Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

It is timely that this Bill comes before the House as it gives everybody an opportunity to speak on a very pressing issue. I expressed my concerns on this on the Order of Business in the last few days. Our constituents are telling us about it. We need an opportunity to speak about restoring confidence in the economy. One of the things hampering this economy nationally and internationally is a lack of confidence. Previous speakers have mentioned that various factors have led to this erosion of confidence. One of these, unfortunately, is the fact that despite the best efforts of the Opposition and several Irish economists over the past ten years, nobody wanted to take any precautions against what might happen when the economy levelled out.

For some unknown reason the message was brought forward again and again that the fundamentals were right. However, as the Minister sitting opposite well knows, the fundamentals have not been right for nearly ten years. The whole thing was gone crazy. It was like a circus, a show ground. Everybody had their go. Everything was go. Every light was green. The problem is that when all the lights go green together, there is a crash. This is not new. People should not say, as they have done that nobody knew and we did not see it coming. I cannot understand why people did not see it coming because I, in my small, humble way, put down parliamentary questions to the relevant Ministers eight years ago asking them to address the issue of competitiveness in the economy. At first there was a slight recognition that there was a problem, but that eventually went away. It was boom time, we were all having a party, the Government wanted to party on, and this is where we have ended up.

The problem is that when reality dawns and suddenly people realise that measures must be taken, everybody gets frightened. People have been frightened for a number of reasons. One is that Government failed to manage. It is as simple as that. There is nothing complicated about it. There are statistics available everywhere through the IDA and the various development authorities all over the country which showed trends over the past number of years. Somebody convinced the Government, and it convinced itself, that we had become a high wage economy. Some Ministers were saying this. We were into high-tech business and value-added products of the future. We did not have to worry about where we were or where we were going. We were going to put it up to everybody else.

This was absolute rubbish. Once any country relinquishes its grip on manufacturing, a slackness on the grip on service areas automatically follows as night follows day. Any country in the world which has had a slackening in competitiveness in manufacturing will shortly afterwards find itself in difficulty. This has happened over the past ten or 15 years in various other economies in Europe and outside it. I cannot understand why nobody seemed to recognise this was going to happen here. Was it because we are the Irish? Are we special, a race apart, a chosen people? I do not think so. It should have been common sense to see what was coming.

We have two options. We can live in cloud cuckoo land, or we can take serious steps to recover lost ground. We can become competitive again, restore confidence in manufacturing and in those providing services and encourage competition within this economy that would be beneficial to our consumers and exporters as they compete for market in the world space.

In the past number of years the trends have shown that our exports were beginning to slip on international markets because they were not competitive. This has been looming and well flagged. We could not compete. Everything comes back to competitiveness. I echo the comments of previous speakers that the Government has a job to do, which is not to destroy the economy because that would have a further devastating effect. It must restore confidence, ensure competitiveness and, at the same time, encourage the population to support the measures that must be taken. The line emanating from the Government parties is tough decisions must be taken, hardship must be imposed and there will be no gain without pain. However, their policy is all pain and no gain on the basis of all the steps taken over the past six months. Who told the Government parties to proceed in the fashion it has? Did they not know their proposals would have a negative impact? If billions of euro are extracted from the economy, there will be a vacuum, which will lead to further erosion of confidence and tightening of the domestic markets.

Many commentators said we should await stimulus packages, which will resolve everything. A similar crisis occurred in the 1930s following the era known as "The Roaring Twenties". Everything was allowed to run riot in the 1920s, following the First World War. Confidence was restored and everybody was happy to spend. Then there was a massive economic crash with major implications. Many people say the crisis was resolved by President Roosevelt's inspirational New Deal and the Hoover plan. However, tragically and harshly, a war in which approximately 60 million died addressed the crisis. Was that not a high price to pay to restore confidence in the global economy? That happened because in the 1920s everybody thought everything would be easy and they would not have to work and so on. They could dream and get paid for it.

The crash happened and nobody, sadly and understandably, wanted to give up what he or she had because one cannot take from people readily and expect to be applauded for it. The war diverted people's attention. Suddenly it dawned on them that they were in a tight spot and they had to concentrate all their energies on the major danger on the horizon. That massive onslaught and human tragedy has been forgotten and nobody wants to hear about it anymore. Hopefully, we will learn from history and we will not have to go through that process again. Stimulus packages did not work in the 1930s when several attempts were made. When the war happened, everybody recognised they would have to survive together or not at all.

The Government parties must inspire the people at this time. They must lead and encourage them to bring them along. The Opposition has an important role as well. Our job is to challenge and to be in the Government's face at every opportunity to make it stand up its case and not to acquiesce. I do not want to hear lectures from Government Members about the Opposition bringing forward proposals. They have access to consultants and massive Departments. They claim we have been allowed access to Exchequer returns and, as a result, we should know what we are talking about. They have been looking at the figures for the past six months and every week they have come up with different conclusions. What are they looking at? They expect the Opposition to be suddenly inspired following a quick "now you see it, now you don't" examination of the figures. It is about time the Government parties got real. What are they at? This is a serious problem, which does not require such frivolity. The time has come for the Government to put its hand up and say, "We are very sorry. We got it wrong. We misled the people. We could have told it differently. We saw it coming and we did not tell you". The situation will be much worse if they did not see it coming.

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