Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I thank Deputy Broughan for sharing his time and welcome the opportunity to speak on this debate on the macroeconomic and fiscal outlook for Ireland. The economic outlook over the past two years has been very dire indeed and with every day that passes, unbelievably it gets worse. Financial statistics and economic projections emanating from the Department of Finance and the Central Bank have been so wide of the mark as to be virtually worthless. The plethora of economists and ESRI pundits are so hit and miss that they almost sound like astrologers.

The entire banking system, including Anglo Irish Bank, AIB and Irish Nationwide, have been telling such porkies and acting so criminally irresponsibly that the Criminal Assets Bureau should be mobilised and directed to their respective boardrooms. The taxpayer is the beast of burden pressed into service to bail out the private sector which controls the financial pillars of the economy. That elite sector worked in tandem with Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrat allies, who turned a blind eye to the activities and smoothed the legislative and regulatory path for these actions.

In the past two years the debt burden placed on the taxpayer from defaulting banks has been over €50 billion. The deficit shortfall in the balance of payments for 2010 alone is close to €20 billion, and we have been told after the Farmleigh meeting that €15 billion of cuts rather than €7.5 billion must come from the taxpayer and the unemployed over the next four years if we are to reach the 3% stability pact deficit agreed with the European Union.

Some €14.5 billion, an incredible sum, has already been taken from the economy and the pockets of the Irish people in the past two budgets. To compound the surreal scenario, the Government is proposing after Farmleigh an even more austere front-loading budget for 2011 to reassure bond markets so they can lend billions to the same financial institutions which got the country into a financial mess in the first place. This is capitalism at its worst and is the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to the world.

We thought we had a regulated mixed economy in Ireland with checks and balances that would protect our economy and people from the excesses of the marketplace. It was, as we now know, a mirage.

However, we must now learn the hard lessons and move forward. We must resolve that we will never allow a similar meltdown of our financial system to occur again with the consequent impoverishment of our people for a generation. We must make common cause with our allies in the European Union and elsewhere to exert benevolent political regulation and control of the global marketplace. People must come before profit and we must agree the national and international mechanisms to achieve that. We must rewrite the rules of international finance so that the entire population of the country is not suddenly plunged into crisis and poverty by powerful forces within that country outside of it which are outside it went beyond its control.

The first step for the Irish people is to elect a new Government-----

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