Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The anger among Deputies in this House reflects the anger in the broader public. We are in a position where the economy has lost 200,000 jobs in the past 12 months, where many young people's futures are blighted, where one third of our young people under the age of 25 are now unemployed, and where 100,000 - 60% - of the job losses have hit young people under the age of 25. We face the prospect of seeing the renewal of emigration, with our brightest and best taken away from these shores. We are now facing the budget, one of the pivotal decisions to be made in the economic cycle, and the Government has nothing to add to the debate we have heard in the weeks running up to today's debate.

It is a reflection on the paucity of ideas on the Government benches that while the Members opposite recognise the need to confront competitiveness and create employment, not one single idea has been offered as to how that might be done. That is the problem we face.

The Government would have this debate portrayed as if it was about flushing out the Opposition to come up with €4 billion in cuts. That is what the Government would like us to have a debate about. This is the same Government that would also have us believe that it was pursuing sustainable policies until it was swept away by an international tsunami; that the property bubble and the damage it has done to this economy has nothing got to do with it; that the collapse in our competitiveness, much of it generated by public run utilities and publicly regulated activities, has nothing got to do with it; and that the weak performance management in our public services and in our health sector which, despite huge increases in spending, still cannot guarantee care to those most vulnerable when they need it, has nothing got to do with it. It would also have us believe that the extravagance and the obscene golden handshakes to people who have let us down has nothing to do with it. That is not the reality. The Minister was at the centre of a web that created those problems and he has to confront his responsibility if we are to begin to confront the problems we now face.

It would be doing a huge disservice to those young people if the Government succeeded in reducing this debate to one about how we will find €4 billion in savings. This is a debate about how we will transform this economy, this society, our politics, the way we run our public utilities, the way we run our public services and the way we generate innovation to offer our young people a future. It is about a vision of an Ireland that can be competitive again and that can create employment for our young people.

There is not a shred of evidence that the Government is giving any thought to those areas. The Government has collapsed this to a sense that this is 15 people around the Cabinet table who are victims of a collapse in public finances, and they are looking to see how they can bale themselves out. The victims of this crisis are not the 15 people sitting around the Cabinet table. The victims are the young people who see no prospects-----

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