Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to address this House and it would be remiss of me not to do as other Deputies have done and thank the people who put me here, the constituents of Dublin North Central who have been trying to survive without a Labour Deputy since 2002. We can be thankful that famine is over.

I never thought that when I made my maiden speech in the Dáil I would be advocating low tax or supporting a Fianna Fáil motion but these are unusual times. Essentially, we are talking about our ability to survive as an economy. That is what this debate is about - employment, inward investment, survival. When we talk to our European neighbours who are putting us under pressure, or to the European Central Bank, it is very important that we make the case - which has often been made - that if the ECB had been doing its job properly, monitoring the crazy lending from European banks to our crazy banks, perhaps we would not be in our present predicament. That is an important point to make when we deal with our European partners. There is no evidence to suggest that any increase in our corporation tax rate would have any material effect on improving the situation in this country in terms of tax intake. It would probably make the situation very much worse, as I believe every Member in the Chamber would agree.

The point I wish to make in this debate concerns the language we use for the economic crisis in which we find ourselves. When we talk of unemployment we tend to refer to individual citizens as "economic units" and we talk about the "economic cost" of unemployment, the €20,000 per year lost in terms of VAT foregone and money given in social welfare payments. However, the real cost is a social cost. The real cost is a family without a working individual in the home, a person who has nowhere to go in the morning, a family without work, a community without work and, potentially, an entire generation without work. Until very recently, I worked in an area of the north inner city which was hit by a situation in the late 1960s and lost the very thing that kept everybody at work, as if a mining village had lost its mine. That is what we may be looking at as a nation. If we lost this corporation tax rate we would be like a mining village that had lost its mine. The area I taught in never recovered from that situation and had the sense of uselessness and the lack of dignity that go with unemployment. This has to become part of our language.

We must stop using the language of economic units and economic cost of unemployment. The loss is a social one - it is when people feel as if they have no worth. Unfortunately, that is the situation in far too many homes. When we trot out statistics such as 450,000 people unemployed we are really talking about everybody's aspirations, hopes and dreams.

In talking about the corporation tax rate I am struck that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. Across parties we agree on this issue. I wish to focus briefly on that point because it is for that unity of purpose everybody outside this Chamber is hoping. All of us have been through a most bruising election campaign and have met people who are falling apart. If we have that unity of purpose in regard to corporation tax surely we can have the same in finding solutions to the problem of unemployment and tacking the fundamental issues about which I am passionate, such as educational disadvantage, literacy and equality, and making this the kind of republic of which we can be proud. Let this not be the last time we have a motion on an issue that has agreement across all parties. This country is far too important to all of us for that to be the case.

We all come from somewhere and represent the people who sent us here. People often correctly deride politics, particularly today and yesterday as events come to light that we all should be ashamed of and about which we should ask questions. If I come from anywhere, I come from Sheriff Street, where there is a little school with a big heart. The children in that school and their future depend on issues like this corporation tax rate of 12.5%. Employment, a place in society and sense of usefulness, dreams and aspirations are far too important for any of us to let the Irish people down. That is why the issue is so important and why I commend the motion to the House.

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