Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

No, I did not. The Minister should examine the record of my party. We were not listened to when we stated we needed to rationalise the structure of government and start reducing the number of quangos, 200 of which were created by the Government in the past ten years. We were not listened to when we stated the Government's banking strategy was reckless, would bring the country to the brink of ruin, was the most expensive option and would put the taxpayer on the hook. Now that the Government is in a hole of its own creation, it wants to pretend it is listening to the Opposition. The Minister, however, out of the other side of his mouth, has now produced this bile, which he appears to have stored up in his Department, and had a go at everyone. I want to play a constructive role.

The Fine Gael Party proposed the establishment of a national recovery bank two years ago. The Tánaiste and Minister attempted to smear that proposal, as if credit is racing through to small businesses, there are no problems and the existing strategy is working perfectly well. In what planet are they living? Does the Minister ever get out of the comfortable seat of his Mercedes and listen to people on the ground speak of what is happening in their businesses or on their streets? The world in which we live is not the world he projects.

If we can make a national recovery bank based on the French model, let us do so or if there are lessons to be learned from other models, let us examine them. Why should we have billions of euro sitting in the National Pensions Reserve Fund holding overseas shares when businesses that could sustain employment and start-ups that could create jobs are being starved of credit? Why does the Minister rubbish our proposals without offering anything in their place? The Government offered a glimmer of hope that some form of guarantee scheme would be introduced to stimulate bank lending but extinguished it as quickly as it was proposed.

I welcome some aspects of this debate. For the first time, we are talking about a plan for the next four years. What problem are we seeking to solve? If we want to fix the public finances and banks, which has been the Government's mantra for the past two years, we will fail. The plan has to focus on fixing people's lives against the real constraints we face. There is a world of difference between these objectives. The policies emanating from the Government are the policies of insiders who want to pull up the ladder behind them, batten down the hatches and try to get through the crisis. The trouble is that the outsiders who will be left on deck exposed to the full brunt of the storm are our young people. In the past two years, 90% of those who lost their jobs lost in the economy were aged under 30 years. They are the people the Government's strategy on banking and the public service - the zero reform agenda - is exposing to the brunt of the storm. Many of these young people could create value and opportunity here. However, having invested more than €100,000 in the education of each of them, we will find that they emigrate to Sydney, Frankfurt and other destinations far beyond our shores.

We need to start thinking about what we can do against the background of the constraints facing us. For this reason, I welcome the announcement by the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance of a plan. However, it must be an honest plan which focuses on our strengths and weaknesses as well as the threats facing us. It cannot be the sort of plan that pretends the public services are being managed effectively, that the manner in which budgets are presented in this House operates satisfactorily or that we are addressing our competitive needs because this is not the case. Government failure goes to the heart of many of our problems and we need a plan that accepts the Department of Finance and its Ministers successively have failed this country. A plan is needed that will ask what is to be done about the serial failure of the Department of Finance and its Ministers. What is to be done about it? What is to be done about the serious failure to deliver strategies that are launched by Ministers at big glitzy affairs but which never succeed? What is to be done about the fact that six months after the Croke Park agreement, which offered an opportunity to reform the manner in which we do things, nothing has happened? No one is driving it, no one has responsibility, there are no programmes of changes and there is no one with the authority to make such changes. Fundamentally, nothing has changed.

The Minister spoke of the need for structural reform to which I look forward to seeing. Although Members were told in 2007 that 43 agencies would experience such structural reform and be merged or rationalised, it has not happened. In most cases, the legislation has not been produced and savings have not been made. It is business as usual and until one recognises that the rigid silos in which the public service are managed are not fit for purpose and that a new approach must be taken, we will continue to fail. This is the reason an economic plan emanating from the Government must begin by addressing how it intends to reform itself. Its central focus should be on the silos in which the Government works, the lack of accountability and the lack of taking responsibility for failure. Were Ministers or the Taoiseach to make a start on an economic plan by honestly recognising their own failures and then begin to put them to rights, people would begin to have some faith and confidence.

I am sick of the plans that the Government has produced. It has produced a smart economy document and another document that promised 300,000 jobs. However, those documents do not contain a single policy change. If one considers the most recent document on the 300,000 jobs, it does not contain a single policy change. It simply states that the targets will be increased so that more will be achieved by doing nothing differently. If one considers the document on the smart economy, it was simply a big bulldog clip wrapped around approximately 1,000 different ideas that were in circulation. No implementation plan has been produced and its single major initiative concerned a €500 million innovation plan. Where is that plan now when small businesses are being denied start-up money? It is not yet in place but still is being talked about.

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