Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

He asked for prayers in Donegal, and they may well be necessary. This document does not provide certainty and clarity required to get this nation back where it should be. It does not address the real potential or open itself up to receiving the contributions that Irish people are prepared to make, provided they are recognised and respected as being fair. The Government made a big point about reducing the minimum wage but it has not acted on the other end of the scale, where exceptional salaries still apply. Nothing has been done about starting the process in this place about the cost of governance and the way we do business, and the Government is refusing to do so even today. It has indicated that we will come back some time at the end of January to debate the Finance Bill, whenever and if it is produced.

Everything for this Government is akin to groundhog day.

People have had enough. As I have stated previously, the Government should have gone by now. If the traditional definition of madness is to do the same things over and over, then this Government's economic and banking policy fits into that category.

Thousands of people woke up this morning and looked at the state of their lives and their circumstances, as the Taoiseach noted. They wonder if they will be able to manage or pay for the charges that are coming, the food on the table and the medicines they need to stay well. Older people will look out at frost-bitten ground this morning and wonder whether next year will be like the past year except worse and where they will find the resources needed to heat their homes. Meanwhile, in the air-conditioned skyscrapers of Frankfurt and elsewhere they will be licking their lips at the millions to be made by betting against this country. Our country was not brought to this point only by the incompetence of the Government.

Even as the Government was outlining its plan yesterday, interest rates on Irish bonds were rising again. It is not sufficient to say it takes a while for confidence to be restored - it does - because there is no belief in the Government and it has no credibility left. That is the principal reason people do not want to invest here.

What was needed was a plan that was open and honest. The plan before us does not fit those criteria. What we got was a document which pretends to deal with the real crisis facing the country. The Government was supposed to set out the details of a four year strategy. While there is a front-loading in respect of year 1 of the strategy, where are the details the Government was supposed to provide for the subsequent years? Where is the evidence of the real and radical political reform people are crying out for and which would demonstrate some sense of leadership and understanding of what are Ministers' responsibilities? The Green Party has left Government but is still on the benches opposite. Whether it was a rush of blood to the head that caused it to make its decision, I do not know but its Ministers are still members of a Cabinet in which they have no confidence and where treachery and betrayal are on the table. This is not the way to run a country, particularly in these circumstances.

If the savings provided for in the plan are to be used for the continuation of what has been a catastrophic failure of banking policy and if this forms the entire basis of Ireland's economic deal with the European Union and International Monetary Fund, this country is clearly on a road to a decade of economic stagnation and potential insolvency. I do not yet know what is the nature of the negotiations in which the Government and IMF are involved but I would like to find out what is the IMF's analysis of the growth projections for Ireland if it believes taxpayers can pay back at what appear to be excessive and exorbitant interest rates. I intend to ask the IMF about this.

This document does not deal with the root cause of the problem, namely, the failure of the Taoiseach and his Government to get an effective public sector which delivers value for money and services for people. Page 65 of the plan states this will have to be the case. This is not the type of plan which will enliven things in such a way as to allow us to say we are on the road to recovery.

The failure to reflect the additional costs of the Government's failed banking policy makes a joke of the public finance projections underpinning the plan. Their absence makes the debt forecast nonsensical.

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