Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)

I very much welcome what Deputy Calleary said. I refer as much to the tone of what he has been saying as to the content. Many of us in the House are savouring or waiting for the opportunity to participate in the new committees, be they finance committees or otherwise, to which they will be assigned. There will be an opportunity for genuine debate on the issues that confront the country and for claim and counter-claim to be teased out.

I detect from Deputy Calleary and some of his colleagues mounting frustration over the extent to which Members on the Government side and, perhaps, public commentators argue that policies promulgated by the previous Government are at the heart of our problems. That argument is unanswerable. I will not repeat it; suffice it to say it goes way beyond the normal rhetoric people somewhat cynically expect from any new Government, the kind in which every new Government allows itself to indulge for a few weeks or months.

What happened over the past 12 to 15 months and also the past 12 to 15 years creates a legacy not only of incompetence but also of manifestly failed policies. These were then matched with even worse failure in the attempt to reverse the effects of the decisions that were made. We have discovered that every decision made from the guarantee onwards was not only substantially wrong in itself but actually had the effect of reducing the options the Government would have subsequently in rectifying what had been done. This was the case right up the bailout. Yesterday Deputy Michael McGrath said that before Christmas the then Opposition parties described the bailout as an obscenity and disaster and stated those parties are not saying that now they are in government. It remains the case that what was done did constitute an obscenity and disaster.

There is no use in criticising people for using the word "straitjacket", which is not a word discovered only after the election. I distinctly remember the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, and myself using it prior to the election when assessing what had been done in respect of the bailout and agreement. We stated the bailout would constitute an enormous constraint on the economic independence of the country for years. Deputy Brian Lenihan, who was Minister for Finance, told me in the Seanad that he had written the next four budgets for this country. He was revelling in this. Let me quote him almost exactly verbatim: "I have written the budgets for the next four years in this country and you will depart from them at your peril." He did not tell us at that stage what he told us later, namely, that he was not actually holding the pen when writing those budgets, and that the budgets and economic decision-making were being done outside the country. He had surrendered the economic independence of the country on key budgetary and economic issues in the course of the bailout he had entered into.

The Government is criticised in the belief it has embraced the bailout and decided it is great. This is not the case at all. What the Government must do is live in the real world. That is what it is doing in addition to setting up a track of renegotiation, pursuing changes in the agreement and seriously raising the question of burden-sharing. It was told burden-sharing would not be countenanced by the European Central Bank, or our "Frankfurt masters" as Deputy O'Dea described it yesterday, but it pushed it in a robust way. Whose fault is it that the phrase "Frankfurt masters" was used? We will have to return to the issue of burden sharing because the level of debt is not sustainable in the medium to longer term. This is my personal view from what I observe and read. The debt will not be sustainable without serious concessions, be it through restructuring of the interest rate or the payback time. Addressing this is the challenge the Government is confronting.

The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, is absolutely correct that it was never believed there would be a sprint and that renegotiation could take place in 24 hours, and that everything would be delivered. It is a marathon not a sprint. Deputy Donnelly made the fair point that we should put together a team and work together - we should get going on this – but prolonging engagement in the rhetoric that the Government parties are acquiescing in the bailout, as suggested by some Opposition parties, is not beneficial. Living in the real world is what we are doing. In addition to keeping gardaí, nurses and others paid and the State functioning, we are seeking to turn our attention to bringing about serious change and surmounting the problem we face. I hope we will have an opportunity to tease out these issues at committee meetings.

There are three broad areas we must address, which areas I do not want to over-simplify. First, we must address how we reached the current position, be it through committees or the banking inquiry mentioned by Deputy Dara Calleary, on which the Government has started the ball rolling. Second, how do we get out of this situation? The Government is turning its attention to this question. I heard two colleagues describe the jobs initiative to be introduced next week as a damp squib. I could not describe anything I have not seen as a damp squib. Deputy Willie O'Dea said he thought it would be, but, to be fair to him, he said he hoped it would not, which is something. Let us wait and see. The key element of what the Government must do is turning its attention to the jobs initiative. That is the beginning of getting out of this position.

The third issue is how to ensure we never return to this position. That is a challenge for the Government which is also being addressed, whether it is through a change in the way the Houses operate and scrutinise business or constitutional change. All of the areas the Government has indicated it intends to pursue will be addressed.

The notion has been put forth by some Sinn Féin Members that the Government has comfortably slipped into the chair of governing and decided that this deal is wonderful and that it will just sit back. That is not the position and I do not believe Deputy Pearse Doherty really believes it. However, his position appears to be reduced to the following proposition, that if we remove Deputies Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin, whom Deputy Dara Calleary has fairly indicated as very experienced people, from the negotiating table in Frankfurt and replace them with Deputies Pearse Doherty and Mary Lou McDonald or Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, their great negotiating skills will be of such strength and power that they will overwhelm the ECB and the European institutions and that when they return from Frankfurt 24 hours later, everything will be grand. The proposition with which the Deputy has sought to persuade the House on more than one occasion is that the Government lacks negotiating skills and that its members should take a crash course from Sinn Féin on negotiating. I thought he was joking, but his face was serious.

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