Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)

First, we are nine weeks in the new Dáil and it is important that the Government does not defend itself continually by contrasting itself with Fianna Fáil. The people of Ireland will not judge the Fine Gael Party-Labour Party Government on how it contrasts with Fianna Fáil. They will judge it on the basis of jobs and the ability of the State to function. North Korea would contrast favourably with the policies of Fianna Fáil over the past number of years. It is important to focus on developing policies that will bring real change.

The last election was all about how the people would witness massive change with the new Fine Gael Party-Labour Party Government. We were promised the renegotiation of the EU-IMF bailout package and that job creation would be central to this process of change. We are 100 days in and that change is nowhere to be seen. The EU-IMF bailout and the memorandum have hardly altered at all. In fact, we are seeing a Government that is Fianna Fáil mark two. It is incredible to sit here and have Fianna Fáil ex-Ministers congratulating Fine Gael on implementing exactly what they themselves would implement.

Government is about making choices, and the choices the Government makes will determine its legacy. It has real choices to hand. If the Government acquiesces in this current bailout, it will further the likelihood of this country going down the route of default. The Government has a choice about creating jobs. I was shocked when I read the memorandum of understanding. It is striking that amid all the paragraphs about banks, wages, etc., there is only one paragraph about job creation. There are no job creation targets or budgets. There is no information about the job creation programmes to be developed or how employment will be increased.

Job creation is central to the recovery of the State. It is the oxygen by which most of the State functions, from the family basis right up to the society and national basis. Job creation impacts on all levels of our being. It impacts on how we feed ourselves, clothe ourselves and even on whether we can house ourselves. It impacts on whether we, as individuals, can exist in this country in the future.

Job creation was the mantra of the Fine Gael and Labour parties for the past number of years. If one remembers the Lisbon treaty referenda, the posters were festooned with the words, "Jobs, jobs, jobs". Nobody knew it was the Lisbon treaty on which they were voting; people thought they were voting for jobs.

At the last election, each of the Government parties made a massive pitch that they would increase jobs in the State, yet now that they are in power we have had to wait 100 days for a jobs creation budget, initiative or whatever the Government wants to call it. In that 100 days, 13,000 people, the Government parties' constituents, have emigrated. They cannot wait for the Government to get its act together to implement a jobs policy.

The policy implemented over the past number of years has been deflationary and anti-jobs. Fianna Fáil implemented it for the past three years and the Fine Gael and Labour parties are implementing it at present. Deflationary and anti-jobs are two sides of the same coin and for each euro the Government takes out of the economy, there is a further multiplier effect which reduces the size of the economy.

It is significant that in the memorandum of understanding two lines are beside each other. The first line is that they expect growth to resume in 2011. The next line is that the currently estimated decline in real GDP in 2010 was larger than anticipated. The heart of the problem of the memorandum's economics is that expectations are always wrong. For three years, growth level expectations have been lower. Unemployment has been greater than expectations and investment recovery has been lower than expectations. One would expect in this situation that there would be a motivation on the part of Government to change the policies, but the Fine Gael and Labour parties refuse to leave Fianna Fáil's economic orthodoxy and continue on that road themselves. We can forget the programme for Government and the Fine Gael Party and Labour Party manifestos. What we have in the 31st Dáil is dominated by Fianna Fáil's four-year plan and EU-IMF austerity. The memorandum of understanding is the real manifesto under which the State will be run in the next number of years.

Unfortunately, there are not too many Labour Party Deputies in the Chamber. However, from speaking to Labour Party supporters and members, I know that they particularly feel the imposition of this austerity implementation over the past number of months. Within nine weeks, the Labour Party's ideology and policy has been gutted. It has been replaced with a mantra that the State is in receivership and the Government will not revisit any of the cuts made by the previous Government. Within nine weeks, Labour Party Deputies have transmogrified into Fine Gael vote fodder.

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