Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

This Government is intent on ensuring it discharges its mandate as the elected Government of this country which is, as I stated, facing an unprecedented economic and financial crisis. With the authority of this House, this Administration, under my leadership, has had to make adjustments during the past 12 months. Tomorrow, the House will decide whether this Government will continue to enjoy the confidence of the House. I am confident that the outcome of this debate will be that it does enjoy that confidence.

As I stated earlier on Leaders' Questions, I find it particularly disingenuous and not very democratic for people in this House to suggest that the Government does not have valid authority. For so long as there is a majority in this House who support it, the Government has valid authority, as in the case of any other Government. We acknowledge that the policies we have had to pursue are not immediately popular. They are policies that require us to raise taxes and to make savings in expenditure. The reason we do this is the collapse in tax revenues during the past financial year with expenditure, including capital expenditure, amounting to more than €60 billion and tax revenues amounting to only €40 billion. Clearly, that is not a sustainable public finance position. A Government would be in dereliction of its duty were it not to take whatever measures are necessary to bring about a sustainable path for our public finances. We do that not because we are aligned to any particular economic ideological philosophy but because it is fundamental to the recovery of this country. The one lesson of our economic history, if we are not to repeat the 1980s experience, is not to postpone those decisions.

The Opposition has opposed the proposals we have brought forward, whether in relation to tax or expenditure, by way of the four or five major initiatives brought forward since taking office last May when it became clear after the first six months' Exchequer returns that we had to make certain adjustments. If people continue to oppose in every respect, although they suggest in principle that they agree with the overall view that we must return our public finances to order, then they are opposing the prospect of sustainability of our public finances. They are postponing and prolonging the prospect of recovery by reason of their political actions here. If, as we all accept, the seriousness of our situation is such that we must bring forward such proposals then people who do not agree with the specific proposals outlined must come forward with alternatives that make up the figures in some other way. Everyone is entitled, be it individually or by way of independent party grouping, to put their overall position and case to this House in respect of every economic debate in this House. However, while on the one hand Fine Gael is suggesting we should be spending less, the Labour Party is, on the other, suggesting that we should be spending more. At the end of the day, we have brought forward a plan. We have brought forward proposals as to how we are going to get out of this problem. This year alone, the Government, with all of the impact it has in terms of political support in the country for obvious reasons, has made an adjustment of more than €8 billion, an almost 5% correction in GNP terms in this first year of correction of our public finances. That is a greater level of adjustment than any other Government in the euro area with similar problems, or, in some the case of Spain, problems worse than ours.

I acknowledge and accept that the national indebtedness of the country will rise from a low of 20% owing to the prudent policies pursued in different times and different circumstances with record investment in education, health and social welfare rates, and quite properly so. We looked after pensioners and surpassed the €200 per week limit we set ourselves in previous Administrations. While we did all that, we also halved the national debt and brought our GNP debt ratio to 20%. That is rising now to 41% this year and will rise to 59% next year. Deputy Kenny has suggested the economy is going down the toilet in toto. He is suggesting that is a level of indebtedness that is simply out of kilter with everybody else. We will still be the third lowest-----

See this speech in context