Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

When I read some of the material the Government is putting out, it alarms me. The Minister said, "We have challenges but we have responded in a timely and appropriate manner to the challenges which have been presented". The answer to that is "Yes" if one says the challenges were to bail out corrupt bankers. That is all the Government has responded to. It has not done anything constructive for the economy. That is the fact of the matter.

I should be half sorry with the Fianna Fáil part of the Government because the usual practice was that Fianna Fáil would run the economy into the ground, cut to a general election and escape before it was caught. On this occasion, because it has been in power for so long the Government, in particular the Fianna Fáil part of it, was caught badly and demonstrated clearly its level of incompetence in terms of managing the economy in any sort of constructive way. That is particularly evident to everybody now because the economy has smashed to such a degree that it will not be repaired for at least a generation before the so-called bailout from the IMF, the European Commission and the ECB is repaid. That is dreadful.

We are supposed to be discussing the meeting of Ministers for Finance of the euro group. It paid some platitudes to the Minister following the meeting but I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting behind closed doors.

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