Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Minister for Finance is given to having soaring rhetoric at the end of his speeches. One recalls his standing ovation following last October's budget. He said at the end of today's speech, "There are no soft options or safe hiding places. The time has now come..." In terms of the Budget Statement, there were soft options and hiding places. The Minister was the person who took them, to the considerable discredit of politics and public service in this country.

I refer specifically to the keynote part of the Minister's speech, which addressed the issue of reform on areas such as serving Deputies who are former Ministers and are in receipt of ministerial pensions. The Minister laid out as a critical part of his budget architecture that if sacrifices and contributions were required from all sectors, they would be led by people at the top of the public service and office holders structure. One of the difficulties with this country is that the Minister failed abjectly to deliver on that.

When the debate took place on salaries for members of the Judiciary the Minister might recall that I suggested to him he should include in the legislation a scheme that would be available to the Judiciary. I recall asking the Minister who in the Judiciary would take such a scheme to court. If that were to happen, a previous Supreme Court ruling should have given the Minister fair wind. What concerns me is that the Minister talked the talk but he did not deliver. That has been his continuous theme as an officeholder.

In the brief time available to me, I wish to mention the banking crisis because, again, in his speech the Minister referred to us being subject to international factors. It is long past the time that Fianna Fáil in particular recognised that so much of the Irish banking crisis was completely home-grown. It was stimulated by the party's policies and inflated by the policies of the Government and the Minister's predecessors. That is at the core of the damage our economy has suffered. Part of that damage is reputational damage. The Minister has done relatively little other than talking a lot of rhetoric about how he will solve the problem. He has done little to address the problems in a serious way that players, whether they be in the United States or the city of London, would say the problem in Ireland has been addressed.

The core of the problem with the banking crisis is that there is a general belief that the golden circle of the politically connected, the bankers and the developers still influence every step of the resolution of our banking crisis. Perhaps only when there is a change of Government and that pervasive influence is no longer there, will our reputation be fully restored. One can ask why that is important. This is important because the banking crisis and overall financial position are at the core of our unemployment crisis. All the commentators are talking freely about unemployment rising to 16% by this time next year. The Minister and his colleagues in Government have not put sufficient thought into what a rate of 16% would entail. I was a Minister of State at the Department of Social Welfare when Deputy Michael Woods was Minister, at which time the unemployment rate was 18%. One really needs to think outside the box to get the unemployed back into the workforce, education and training.

The Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, is offering what is essentially a hopeless alternative. He knows from our shared constituency that it takes two or three months before those who become unemployed, particularly those who were self-employed, can register with the different agencies. Consequently, what otherwise might be a short-term gap in employment becomes much longer, particularly where those affected are young, male and not particularly well educated. The biggest threat we face is that unemployment will become the norm such that the unemployed will get used to not having a reason to get up in the morning. The Government does not appreciate the extent of the crisis that is engulfing families right across the country.

The Minister made reference to the stimulus programme, which he has included as part of the capital programme in spite of savaging the latter, and referred to the investment in schools. The investments in stimuli came only after a long campaign by the Labour Party to insist that some employment be retained in the construction industry. What about the other areas? In the budget last year, the Minister made a fatal decision to raise the rate of VAT by half a percentage point. The amount of revenue involved in this increase was neither here nor there in terms of income flow but the increase served as a tipping point based on policy that was basically designed to bolster tax collection and preserve revenue. However, the policy failed abjectly to account for the likely economic consequences and for how people would behave when the very small 0.5% increase was imposed on them. They went in droves to the North.

What is happening now is like a slow playing out of the rest of the crisis. At present, there is a price war involving three or four dominant supermarket traders whose gross profit margins are way in excess of those in other EU countries. In spite of this, the supermarket operators are squeezing the lifeblood out of various sectors, particularly the farming sector and the middle-level retail sector. The supermarkets are seeking to squeeze the margins of producers in Ireland, be they producers at primary level, such as agricultural producers, or assemblers or packagers, to the point that they cannot continue to operate. Perhaps the stabilisation package announced today will help some of those operators in addition to those trading abroad. However, there is no doubt that what the Minister set in motion when he sent people to the North to shop has caused a series of structural faults in various sectors of the Irish economy, with the effect that we are bleeding jobs. This means the Minister, for the period during which he remains in office, must come up with fresh ideas. If this means he must accept those of the Labour Party, we will welcome it. At least he will be taking some action.

Let us consider the referendum on the Lisbon treaty. For the next couple of months, I would prefer if some of the Ministers refrained from public debate. In the United States, people take a holiday at times from the high summer season up to Labour Day at the beginning of September. Ultimately, when the people vote on the treaty, the key question they will have in mind will be whether it will help them and their families to keep their jobs. They will ask whether it will help them to be part of a bigger European economy and sustain them.

Some of the issues that dominated the debate before the last referendum on the treaty will be replaced by very simple bread-and-butter questions. If the Government wants the involvement of Ireland in the European Union to continue to the fullest extent possible, it must give a message of hope. In part, this would involve acknowledging the mistakes and disasters the Government itself has caused for the economy and employment.

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