Frank Fahey (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. As stated by the Minister, while on the face of it this Bill has a laudable purpose, namely, to reduce the burden of costs on consumers and industry - something we would all like to do - it bears no relationship to the budgetary or economic realities with which we are faced. Gimmicks and frills and facile initiatives such as that represented in the Bill before us will not create a single job or help a single person out of poverty.

The Bill would completely undermine the long established and carefully developed systems of independent regulation in this country. The overall objective of economic regulation in markets where there are traditionally natural monopolies is to create the conditions for competition to emerge and to help drive down prices. No more than the Fine Gael initiative to create 100,000 jobs, which are fictitious, this Bill will not do anything to serve the best interests of the Irish people. We can only achieve the objective of this Bill through greater competition and by driving down prices. In the transport area huge subsidiaries are paid to transport organisations such as Iarnród Éireann, Bus Éireann and so on. Reducing costs in this area, as proposed in the Bill, would simply ensure that we would have to pay greater amounts. There is a way forward by way of competition to make more efficient the services we provide.

It is appropriate that yesterday's editorial of The Wall Street Journal outlines the futility of legislation such as this. Its editorial is headed "The Irish Example Dublin is Showing other Indebted Governments how to cut Spending". It shows that the approach that has been taken by Fine Gael in Opposition has been populist and has attempted to create an impression among people that the situation in the country can be improved with these kinds of fictitious proposals. Yesterday's editorial of that newspaper states:

On the surface, Ireland is in the same trouble as its euro brethren, if not worse. Its deficit-to-GDP ratio last year hit 14.3%, meaning its apparent ability to pay its bills was even more dubious than Greece's. This small, open economy was hit early and deeply by the financial crisis, and its credit-driven construction bubble popped to reveal a pile of uncovered entitlement promises. Dublin along with just about every other red-ink-spattered national treasury, responded by making all the right noises about cutting spending.

So what makes Ireland special? Its political leaders are doing it - and have been since October 2008. The "Celtic Tiger" economy was born out of Ireland's last fiscal crisis in the mid-1980s, another tale of runaway public spending. That eventually spawned supply-side tax cuts to restart private-sector initiative, which allowed for uninterrupted growth from 1994 through 2007.

But while Dublin had learned the importance of non-government enterprise ... [and it goes on.]

It also states:

Athens, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome and the rest have begun to follow suit, finally having caught on that they can't spend their way back to prosperity. The last year-and-a-half of Irish asceticism is now seen as Europe's Ghost of Frugality Future, and politicians around Europe could do worse than to look at Ireland's cuts as a model.

In that editorial The Wall Street Journal - probably one of the most respected newspapers in the world - has cited the example of what is being done in Ireland as the way for countries to get out of their economic difficulties. It would not be writing that kind of editorial if we were to follow the type of policy we have heard proposed by Fine Gael in this House during recent months. This Bill is typical of that policy; it has put forward a populist-type proposal to cut costs across the spectrum. That will not get us out of our economic difficulties, rather it will ensure we will face challenges for many more years than we will have to if we continue with the tight, fiscal and financial reforms in which we are now engaged.

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