Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Minister did not locate himself or his party? Which is the party of the developers? What political party do the developers support? To a person, they are almost all Fianna Fáil supporters. What was their principal bank? It was Anglo Irish Bank. Personalities in very senior positions associated with that bank were almost exclusively and publicly identified as Fianna Fáil supporters. Some were such friends with the then Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, that the diminutive of their names was used by Deputy Ahern. As I recall, he could refer to the chairman and former chief executive of the bank fondly as Seanie, a privilege few in the Opposition parties would have been accorded.

The Minister referred to crony capitalism in Ireland and Professor Krugman identified this crony capitalism in Ireland in very sober and restrained academic language. He stated that "bankers and property developers had close ties to the ruling party". There have been guests in office with it from time to time, but the ruling party for the past 12 years has been Fianna Fáil. This is what the good professor was referring to and this is what the Minister referred to in his interview with the Financial Times one year ago.

I refer to the matter of private hospitals and hotels. At the moment, the owners of many private hospital groups are requesting that staff take fairly significant cuts in salary on foot of parallel cuts in the HSE. By law, employers cannot arbitrarily reduce an employee's wages. I understand industrial action may take place in several of these hospitals, including Mount Carmel Hospital in Dublin and the Aut Even Hospital in Kilkenny. A similar dispute took place in the Mater Private Hospital and several other hospitals in Dublin, but I understand they are owned by different companies and they came to a negotiated agreement with their staff. The difficulty for nurses working nights and an array of other staff in these private hospitals is that the terms and conditions to which they signed up by contract are being reduced very significantly. Since they bought these hospitals at the height of the boom, the owners, investors and developers may have used the investment in the hospital as leverage in respect of financial transactions in some cases.

In this country, private hospitals used to be largely not-for-profit structures but with the boom and the availability of tax breaks, they have become largely for-profit structures. What is the situation in this regard? The Department has neither the time nor the inclination to do a cost-benefit analysis. The Minister referred to what has been taking place in this country as though he had no knowledge of the 400,000 people currently unemployed or of the various businesses which cannot get credit, but yet he will not carry out a cost-benefit analysis that might help to restore the economy. This is ideology gone mad by Fianna Fáil.

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