Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I congratulate Deputy Sandra McLellan on her maiden speech. It is always a difficult thing to come into the Chamber to, as she said, have middle-aged and besuited people listening to one.

Let us be honest. People are enduring a catastrophe of unbelievable proportions. It is as if a tsunami has hit our people in recent years. The fault lines for the tsunami are not some earthquake that happened way out at sea. Most of the fault lines that caused the tsunami happened at home. They were in failed politics, failed regulation systems, cosy social partnership that did not face up to the need for reform. They were in a public service that was not sufficiently open to change, that did not recruit people from outside but was closed. All recruitment to top positions were from within the public service. It did not have proper accountability. Our budgetary system was out of the ark. We voted through money. Members currently on the Opposition benches were making decisions about money without any real, serious scrutiny.

Those are the problems that led to the decay of the systems that produced the earthquake that has occurred. One of the worst mistakes that can happen after an earthquake is that people build with the same building materials, using the same designs over the same fault lines and the same things happen further down the road. What the programme offers is the opportunity to change many of those fault lines that were at the heart of the crisis that we have suffered in recent times. We must look at the reaction we have seen to date in this crisis. It has been to concentrate on a very narrow agenda of fixing the banks and the deficit. As a result, considerable effort has been put into nursing along the failed property loans of the past. However, in the process, we have starved those who could create new businesses and opportunities of credit to drive them along. In the public service, we have concentrated on cutting pay and stopping recruitment but we have not reformed the structures or the way the public service works. We have not opened up the public service to new blood, nor have we tapped into the considerable talent therewithin that is constrained by a system that is largely failing us. We have cut investment, which naturally happened to stay within budget, but we have not found any other imaginative ways to date of continuing to create the infrastructure we need, be it a broadband system, water system or energy system. I refer to the systems we need to drive economic recovery.

The programme for Government is exciting because it presents an opportunity for change. It offers a vision and a direction for change in politics, the public service and the ways in which we face up to the jobs crisis and put together our budgets. No one, including me, can pretend the programme contains all the answers. It certainly does not but it does strike out bravely into new ground where we have not travelled as a society to date. We are talking about steps that will transform the way politics works not only by making the system smaller and less wasteful, but also by ensuring people who are elected shape legislation that is passed in the House and are not presented with legislation as a fait accompli. Members should shape the budgets and consider better ways of spending the money than those put forward by the Government. We are enabling that to happen.

We are establishing an independent fiscal council that will prevent the sorts of crass decisions that poured petrol onto the fire of the booming economy in the past for political advantage. We are setting our face against that so short-term political thinking will not dominate budgetary strategy, as we saw so often, particularly in 2001 and 2002 and again in 2007 in 2008. We are willing to change in this regard.

Most of all, we are willing to confront what most people have talked about, that is, the jobs crisis. The crisis is not just about fixing the banks and public finances in the belief that everything in the garden would be rosy thereafter. The previous Government stated this continuously. There must be a serious change of strategy behind what the Government does. The programme for Government brings that to the fore.

The programme pushes out the boundaries of economic thinking in Ireland. Fine Gael is the party that has been putting forward the idea of a holding company for our really strong State companies that could drive investment in those assets. It could create stronger and more efficient companies delivering to high standards, and it could improve competitiveness. Usually one would say the notions of holding companies and developing our State come from parties of the left but Fine Gael recognises that the State now has considerable responsibilities. We need to drive the strategy in this regard. That is what is behind the thinking of newERA. It is tapping into resources.

The programme states we will have to sell some of the assets that we have owned. If we want to create the assets of the future that are critical to our mission of achieving recovery, bearing in mind that we cannot borrow, we must ask whether we can let go of some of the assets we own. I refer to assets that could thrive just as well in the private sector. The State would get the opportunity to drive what it wants to drive, thus returning to being a source of dynamism. Dynamism was once a feature of the State, particularly in the post-war years under Lemass and Whitaker. It was a matter of grabbing some of the things that have gone wrong by the collar and changing them.

Fine Gael is also considering what it can do about the great obstacle to business represented by the lack of access to finance. We are considering this in a whole range of areas. We are going to offer a loan guarantee in respect of banks lending to small businesses such that banks that have become very risk-averse and focused on their own survival, and which do not look at all at the needs of businesses, can turn their faces again to those needs. We are not content only with that. We are also saying there should be special funds for micro-enterprises and start-up companies.

Let us be honest: the future of this country will be secured through the ingenuity and creativity of people at home, the sorts of entrepreneurs I met yesterday from the constituency of the Minister for Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Deenihan. They were from Altobridge, a company that makes use of research in UCC and the Institute of Technology Tralee. It is bringing venture money from Intel, a company which is almost a family name in Ireland. It is an asset. Altobridge is investing in modern technology to provide a service in Malaysia and Indonesia. When one sees a Kerry company accessing such markets, one must ask what better company one could have. This is what we can do. We must unleash this ingenuity at home. Micro-enterprise funds are very important in this regard. We are committed to a new bank that would open up opportunities in this area.

We recognise there are new sectors that we can revitalise. The digital gaming sector, for example, is growing at tremendous speed. Although the sector is dynamic, we have all the ingredients to build on that strength.

The programme for Government is not backward looking, nor does it forget the need to create employment. It is not a question of middle-aged people in their grey suits because the programme considers how we can shake up the way we run the State.

While we may have our political differences, we are all in this together, regardless of the side of the House we are on. We need to avoid the sort of thinking that stipulates every change is a zero-sum game, such that if one person is giving a bit someone else must concede. Too much of the debate, be it the political debate or that on public service reform or economic change, is viewed as a zero-sum game. It is regarded as a question of them or us. We must stop thinking in this manner.

I am old enough and long enough in the House to know people will lampoon the Government but I ask that we not always deal in caricatures of one another. I have listened to Sinn Féin talking and believe it is developing a caricature of Fine Gael which it wants to batter down. Fine Gael is a party that is churning out new ideas. We need to engage with one another on those ideas. Sinn Féin and the Independents are bringing ideas to the table. The Government side has 113 people bristling with ideas. Many of them are newly elected and want to shape the future of this country.

I hope the debate can be of greater maturity. I hope that as we offer more opportunities for Members to engage constructively, we use them to the benefit of the country.

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