Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

In the context of growth, a strategic decision was taken to protect enterprise, investment and education in the budget. These three areas are key to encouraging growth. We need to make our debt dynamics work. A development which has been of assistance in recent weeks is the fact that the matter of our 12.5% corporation tax rate has been placed on the back burner. I commend our French and German colleagues on recognising that this is not the time to introduce fundamental changes to our approach to enterprise, which continues to work to our benefit. We will need to adhere to that approach in order that we might, in the interests of this State and those of the wider eurozone, extricate ourselves from our economic difficulties.

Investing in enterprise, an area in which we have real strengths and capabilities and people with real skills, will allow us to create the type of growth that will assist in allowing us to emerge from our current difficulties. A great deal of this investment will go to the green economy. Deputy Bruton inquired earlier about investment plans relating to the smart grid, green energy and broadband. He is correct in identifying these areas because they are critical in the context of the action we need to take. State companies and those which operate the grid are making significant investments that will assist the economy in turning the corner. As a result of this, electricity and gas prices are decreasing and this will provide us with a competitive advantage. The development of renewables is bringing down the price of electricity here, which, according to the report, is the sixth cheapest among our comparator countries in the EU. Progress is being made. There is a growth opportunity, particularly in the green economy and in areas such as retrofit where we may use new funding mechanisms to help pay our way.

I understand Deputy Gilmore when he asks if there is risk in terms of a figure being so large that it has a deflationary effect, but I listened to the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, yesterday and he made sense to me. Unfortunately, we must get back to single figures. We would be the only eurozone country not doing so and that is the dynamic which requires a €6 billion adjustment. I believe it can be done in a way that does not deflate the economy and that there is a pent-up skill and enterprise opportunity in this country that is very real. It needs a functioning banking system, it needs a wee bit of confidence back, but the capability, ingenuity and sense of inventiveness and enterprise of the Irish people is real. Even where we are contracting the public service, I believe there is an alternative expansion that can occur in the domestic economy that will make up for that and we can work our way through this.

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