Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

He did not accept it last week either when the IMF told us that the bank bailout in this State would be more expensive for Irish taxpayers than for those anywhere else. The Taoiseach told us in so many words that the IMF had its figures wrong. The IMF later clarified the position and stood over its figures. Today we have an ESRI report telling us that the economic recession in Ireland is the worst for any developed country since the Great Depression of the 1930s. We are told that by the end of next year, almost one out of five people in the workforce will be out of work. The Taoiseach tells us this morning that there are now 384,000 people on the live register. How many will be on the live register by the end of next year, according to these ESRI figures? How many more people will lose their jobs before the Taoiseach loses his?

Does the Taoiseach believe that what is happening to our economy does not have anything to do with the way in which Fianna Fáil has mismanaged it in recent years? Does he still hold to that view? Does he still believe it has nothing to do with him and that it is something which has appeared like the Mexican swine flu, out of the blue and having nothing to do with the way the Government puffed the property bubble and did not face up to the problems in the economy? The Taoiseach tells us again today that he will not accept what the Opposition is saying. He would not accept it this time last year when we told him that an economic problem was coming. He would not accept it before last summer when we told him there was a problem in the banks. It took a long time for the penny to drop with the Taoiseach that people were losing their jobs and that businesses were going to the wall. Even as recently as last month, the Taoiseach would not accept in the House a Labour Party set of proposals to find work or meaningful activity such as education and training to deal now with the immediate problems of people who are losing their jobs.

The Taoiseach simply does not accept this reality. He seems to be in absolute denial that outside the walls and gates of this parliamentary area, people are losing their jobs and businesses are going to the wall. Those who are or were self-employed are telling us repeatedly that when they turn around, there is no help available to them. They cannot turn to anybody in a State agency and they cannot get credit from banks to keep their businesses going and retain their employees. We are now facing into the prospect, according to the Taoiseach's own admission, of 500,000 people idle and without a job to go to in the morning. He keeps looking across the Chamber at the Opposition parties and asking what we are proposing. We have repeatedly put forward proposals but the Taoiseach has paid only lip service to them. He certainly paid lip service to some of the Labour Party proposals in his Ard-Fheis speech. However, nothing is happening.

The Taoiseach must get it into his head that the key to solving our economic difficulties is protecting jobs and getting people back to work. The Government will not solve the problems in the public finances, the banks or the general economy without people going back to work. The ESRI report today and the live register figures provided by the Taoiseach are confirmation that every day, week by week and month by month, more and more people are losing their jobs and more and more businesses are going to the wall while the Taoiseach and his Government are stuck like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights, absolutely frozen and unable to act.

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