Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I have a question for the Minister which is pertinent to Greece. As I understand it, Greece is reviewed by the IMF team every quarter. I spoke today with a person from Greece who is familiar with what the country is going through. I understand that reviewing data every quarter is part of what the IMF does as its standard template. The Minister made a distinction when he said the ECB and the European Commission would review Ireland only every year but the fact is the IMF does quarterly reviews. That means that if a country does not meet the quarterly target, as in the case of Greece recently, the VAT rate is raised, as it was in Greece. The Minister ought to clarify that point.

Is it the Minister and his Government, rather than mandarins in the Department of Finance, who are negotiating a package and does it consist only of deflationary measures? There is no economy in the world of which I am aware where such deflation has succeeded. I include the great leap forward - or whatever it was called - practised at various times by the Soviet Union and China which consisted of primitive capital accumulation with the people in the country being allowed nothing while everything went into the superstructure, infrastructure and army of the state. Those are the only examples in history and they were accompanied by terrible suffering in the societies in question. How will the Minister deflate this economy back to recovery? It has never been done in economic history.

I say to our European allies that the Irish Labour Party is extremely conscious of its responsibility and of the benefits that membership of the European Union has brought to this country. We are very proud to have been part of the European Union and to share in the many benefits membership has brought us. However, Ireland is in a moment of peril, as an economy and as a country. So, too, is Europe. I do not know whether the Minister is any longer in a position to argue with his European colleagues against deflating Ireland to the point where the Irish economy would be killed for a great number of years, almost like a country paying tribute after a war. That is not the road to recovery, for either Ireland or the European Union. I do not know whether the Minister's Government is in a position, given its state of chaos and collapse and the clear and evident collapse of morale within it, not to mention the departure of the late lamented Green Party-----

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