Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

The previous speaker spoke about hypocrisy, the common good and other matters. I have been in this House for only 17.5 years but I have heard a great deal of hypocrisy in that time, of that there is no doubt. I heard people when they were on this side of the House for the short time that we were in government tell us what they would and would not do. We know the state the country is in and that is why we are in this situation. We must recognise that. Those on low salaries who have had them cut have seen that the Government was able to find €22.5 million for a bank that has no future and for which there is no hope. Issues such as this one arise to be dealt with because of the current crisis in the country.

I welcome an opportunity to speak on this motion regarding ministerial expenses. My party colleagues such as Deputies Bruton, O'Donnell and others have dealt ably with the motion and I will deal with the Government's amendment to it. Having been a Member of the Dáil for 17.5 years, I was unfortunate not to have had an opportunity to earn a ministerial pension. Therefore, this issue is not relevant to me personally nor is it relevant to many others on the Fine Gael side. However, with all the cuts that have been imposed on people by this Government, even on those on very low incomes, it is not difficult to understand the anger on the ground regarding this issue, having regard to the massive amounts of money that have been given to bankers and to fund various other situations that have been allowed by the Government.

The words in the Government amendment to the motion that Dáil Éireann "takes note of the Government's actions to deal with the economic crisis" raises more questions than it answers. In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, there is no sign of even one job the Government has created by any action it has taken. Many jobs have been lost in small industries and in the retail sector because of Government inaction. The Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, admitted that the Government had made a major blunder regarding the increase in VAT introduced in the 2009 budget at a time when the UK Government decreased its VAT rate, and this led to a €700 million loss to the economy in a few months and caused major damage to the retail sector and the loss of jobs.

The single biggest topic in the Border region currently is the crisis in the Quinn industry, it being a group that created 5,500 jobs on this island and that supports many thousands more. A member of the legislative Assembly in Stormont who attended a meeting in Cavan recently said that the Quinn issue had brought politicians from all parties, north and south of the Border, together for the first time working for the one purpose and singing from the same hymn sheet; and that was to save jobs.

I take exception to what a previous speaker who was a former Minister, Deputy Mary O'Rourke, said, namely, that we in the Opposition never do anything positive, that we always criticise and we never try to work with the Government. Those in government nearly blame the Opposition for that fact that Ireland is in the state it is in today.

I want to point out one issue to the Minister of State. We first met the Quinn employees in Ballyconnell on Easter Saturday. Every politician present from every party, north and south of the Border, agreed to work together to try to save as many of those jobs as possible. Deputy O'Hanlon said that in his 32 years in this House he never saw a group work so closely and that no effort was made by those people to get media coverage to make points against each other. We attended every meeting with the regulator, the administrators, the Ministers and everybody else involved. We advised the representatives of the workers what we were doing. It was all done in harmony. Yet, the Minister and his colleagues went to Cavan this week and not one member of the Opposition was informed about this, good bad or indifferent. It is all right for the former Minister, Deputy O'Rourke to tell us what we should do, but when we try to do it, we get a kick in the teeth or perhaps even worse.

As I said, one of the longest serving Members of the Dáil made a statement in public that he never saw people working so closely as the Quinn Group of workers. However, it has emerged that as of now there is no resolution to the Quinn issue. The administrator has already announced that he is seeking more than 900 redundancies from the insurance business solely as a result of the withdrawal of Quinn Insurance from Northern Ireland and the UK market. One had to accept the regulator's word at the time he closed that market but major questionmarks now arise as to why he had to do so only hours before he appointed acting administrators rather than allowing the administrators to withdraw the major loss measures from the various sectors of the market and keep the rest open. As a group of parliamentarians working together, we believed for a long time that actions were taking place behind the scenes within Government which would save the company and would clearly lead to a change of personnel at the helm, but it came as a major shock to all of us that this promise of Government action did not lead to any resolution and that Quinn Insurance is now up for sale. I again call on the Government, particularly the Taoiseach, to urgently re-examine this whole situation to see if there is any way this company can be saved as a major insurance entity.

I remind the House that when Quinn Insurance was established, it was impossible for young drivers-----

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