Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Arthur Morgan. I listened with great care to the speeches made. There are some points with which I find myself in agreement. In the course of the ten minutes available to me, I wish to put some fundamental questions about what is under discussion in this Bill. In the past week there has been a considerable debate about what we discuss in the House and how effectively we can discuss it. In this Finance Bill there is a great inability to face up to some fundamentals of political economy. At the risk of future political consequences, I might as well state that at this hour of the night, one will not find many of the media interested in what we have to say about the economy. I find a great limitation in what I hear in respect of the problems in place now. I have spent a great deal of my life as an academic but as such, one is neither deaf nor blind to what is taking place in one's constituency. This week in my constituency some 175 people in Boston Scientific lost their jobs. Whether one has been a lecturer, professor or a teacher, one understands what it is like for people to go home and say that they have received notice that they are to lose their jobs. What I find rather strange in the analysis taking place is how little political economy is present in the debate.

I will outline some the questions one might put although I realise I have a very limited amount of time in which to speak. Do we accept that the model of the economy that has been in place for a period has been a significant failure? If one does not examine the matter in a sharp sense, taking its parts bit by bit, one ends up with rather general statements. I agree with some of the points made by Deputy Ardagh, but the term he used was "We" were involved in this great excess which brought us to the point at which our expenditure vastly outstripped our income, based on a speculative bubble in the property market. The fact is the use of "We" is disguising a truth. Not everyone built dozens of townhouses in bogs in north Leinster. Not everyone shared in all of this expenditure of a lavish nature which took place. Not everyone was accommodated personally without collateral by the banks. After this traumatic week, let us decide in the interests of truth that we will not use the term "We" unless we specify to whom the "We" refers. However, we may use the term "We" to say that we must all pay for this now.

There was a tendentious speech given in the previous matter under discussion today that suggested the percentage paid by higher civil servants was in some way a greater sacrifice than that of people we drove practically below the poverty line at clerical officer level in the public service. This is a great nonsense. The question of where one stands in this regard was put by one Deputy. I can inform the Deputy very straightforwardly where I stand on this matter.

There is good and informed political and economic opinion, including from such people as Joseph Stiglitz of the World Bank, which holds that the model was disastrous. There are things which cannot and should not be supplied in a republic. In respect of the security of citizens, the market cannot supply a guarantee of basic decency and a floor below which no one should be allow to fall. If one doe not accept this, one finds oneself paying for tax concessions for a minority, while reducing the income of the disabled, the poor, widows and so forth. In addition, the Christmas bonus was taken off people. Upon examination, one finds the tax concessions given to a very narrow group of people would have paid for all of that.

Now, let us stop the nonsense. This is an immense political and ideological point. I refer to getting out of the bind we are in. The one truth coming through from every Deputy and on every side is that the greatest problem we face is unemployment. Reference has been made to the loss of jobs, the threat to jobs and the havoc and poverty this creates. However, there is a great distance between the language and the reality. For example, I refer to the matter of returning to education. It is mere idle rhetoric to state we are encouraging people in the construction industry, especially male unemployed people, to get back to education. The tests in place for jobseeker's allowance are prohibitive and one must claim for a particular length of time to qualify for the back to education allowance, but we disqualify people right, left and centre. The week before last, an electrician came to see me at my advice centre who was disqualified.

I refer to an example of getting back to education. Let us suppose one was on an access course. In certain circumstances one must qualify twice. On must be deemed a jobseeker but also, because of the criteria of certain institutions, one must qualify for a maintenance grant which is means tested. The people going back to such colleges have been told they will not be paid the maintenance grant which is, in fact, a major breach of trust. It is absolutely disgraceful.

I would rather dwell on the more positive things that could have been part of an imaginative Bill. One helpful development would be the acceptance that this model has failed. Throughout the world people are considering the proposition. Let us consider the economy overseen by Mr. Obama. They are considering a second round of stimulus. This is what Joseph Stiglitz has advised for the Obama Administration.

Where is the stimulus here? I attended Farmleigh and wanted to be positive, as I am, but I must ask where the supports are for the creative economy that could have generated so many jobs in film, design, digital media and music. I know this area well. When Ireland had the second highest incomes in the world, it had the second lowest level of social protection. One could have incorporated all the caring jobs into the economy, the caring economy. In the green economy, about which we hear so much, we do not see the jobs in terms of technological application.

Consider the use of loose language and the notion of competitiveness, about which many are speaking. I agree with Deputy Ardagh on one point, that is, on the cost of services. He is correct. However, there is a secret agenda such that competitiveness is being used as a cover for driving down wages. If one wants to be a real economist, one should show me, in respect of export costs, the contribution of escalated wage costs. When this occurs, we can talk about what is real.

Competitiveness is being used as a cover to try to mount a campaign to reduce the minimum wage and get people to accept that miserable 1930s philosophy that one should be willing to come out of the house for anything one is offered simply in order to get out of the house. This thinking is widespread and people are using the present economic conditions as an excuse and cover for other regressive attitudes.

It is not only in the property bubble that the magnus of market thinking destroyed things. It made its way into the universities. I know much about these because I worked in them for 18 years. There is no need to make a choice between fundamental research and short-term applications through technology because one can do both. There are areas in which Ireland is a world leader, as emerged at Farmleigh. I refer to immunology, nutrient research and other areas. Ireland was full of opportunities but one found people who were looking for short-term yields from fine places of scholarship and asking them what they could develop in five years. Anybody who knows anything about medical research knows that it takes more than a decade before one can develop a particular product. We put at risk our third level institutions by short-term thinking.

The Minister for Education and Science referred, at a time when we are to produce tens of thousands of unemployed graduates with disappointed expectations, to the brand that was accepted all over the world, that of the National University of Ireland, NUI. The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Roche, referred to the Royal College of Surgeons. If he respects the Royal College of Surgeons, why does his colleague, the Minister for Education and Science, want to dump the NUI brand that is accepted all over the world? It is not that we are experiencing some great trauma this particular week in the absence of some technical expertise, it is that we are not doing real economics. That is what we need in the Finance Bill.

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