Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

That is the reason we have to proceed in this way. There will be an opportunity in this House for everyone to put forward his or her position in terms of pre-budget statements. On the issues raised by Deputy Gilmore or any other party on trying to maintain jobs, we are seeing twice as many people in activation programmes now than previously. We have introduced the stabilisation fund and brought forward the employment subsidy scheme, which we are seeking to improve as we go along. We are looking at reviewing the mortgage subsidy scheme to see in what way we can assist people, in addition to the 14,000 people who are already obtaining relief under that scheme.

We all know the exposure of banks in this country, as in other countries, to the residential property market, and we do no service if we suggest that we are about to see an avalanche of repossessions when the total number of repossessions we have seen in the covered institutions this year to date is 20. To give an impression that mortgage arrears are a greater problem than is currently the case is doing nothing in terms of trying to ensure funding to an Irish banking system that still depends on the international wholesale credit markets for funding.

We must ensure we assist everyone, in so far as we can, with the right policy responses in all of those areas, which do not have unintended consequences or knock-on effects, which in fact negative or take away from the validity of taking the initiative in the first place. We are committed to seeking to do that in as fair a way as possible. Fairness in some respects can be a subjective thing but it is also an objective thing. It is about trying to find a sustainable way forward at a level of provision that will seek to minimise hardship on the service users and to ask those who are providing the services, in the knowledge that they have already made a contribution, to see what further contribution can and must be made now in the interests of trying to ensure that the country comes through this particularly difficult time as safely and as well as possible so that we can build again for the future and reposition the country to take the upturn when it comes. It is a difficult time for the country and our people but we must face the problem, confront it and deal with it. I agree that must be done with as much collective action as possible, seeking agreement where we can but also not avoiding the obvious conclusions we all have to come to in view of the state of the public finances as they currently stand.

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