Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

It is hard to credit the arguments we are being offered to explain the exclusion of Anglo Irish Bank and NAMA from the obligations here. It raises a wider issue, which is that we are singling out the public service for pay cuts. The Government has decided that it will not address the commercial State bodies because it feels their industrial relations muscle is too great to take on. Is the Government going to confront the rip-off that is occurring throughout many operations in this country? It is not going to confront excessive commercial rents, which are killing businesses. Nor will it confront the prices that are being paid for public utilities. No new regime is being offered for regulators that would address how we will secure competitiveness, but there is a new regime when it comes to ordinary public service staff at the very lowest level. Where is the equity or even the sense that we are all united in a common purpose to become competitive again? That would allow Ireland to become an export-led economy again with strong performance in our export markets based on being nimble, adaptable, low-cost and quick to respond to opportunities. It is simply absent. It is not just the unfairness of low-paid people having to take cuts, but also the unfairness of not confronting the much greater obstacles that lie in the way of Ireland's economy recovering.

Soft targets are being chosen here, which belies the fact that the Government is not willing to frame a vision of the deeper change that has to happen in Ireland. That change involves confronting competitiveness on a wide front, as well as confronting reform in the public service and not just cutting pay. The Minister has set out an agenda that requires €2 billion in further cuts next year and €2 billion in cuts the year after and €1 billion in taxes. Perhaps it is €3 billion each year. In 12 months' time will he ask the same people he has taken 5% off now to take another 5% then? He must confront the issue of how Ireland will get out of this hole. What is the medium-term plan to transform Ireland's politics, public service, economy and utilities? That is the agenda he must work on, but that is where he has signally failed. That is why there is so much resentment.

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