Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)

I would first like to refer to the extremely silly remarks made by the Minister, Deputy Burton, about the technical group voting for the bank guarantee. The Minister knows very well that the composition of the technical group in this Dáil is different from that of the last Dáil. There are very serious issues at stake and we could do without this type of silliness. The five ULA Members opposed the guarantee, were in favour of the nationalisation of the banks and the establishment of a State banking system. This is still our position. The fact that the Labour Party voted against the bank guarantee is now irrelevant, given what it has signed up to in the coalition with the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission. This is one coalition Government where the tail certainly will not wag the dog, as the Labour Party has quickly found out.

It is quite insulting for the Minister for Finance to come into this House and present the most cosmetic of changes as something that has any significance. We are being challenged by a number of Labour Party and Fine Gael Members to provide an alternative if we were not able to pay our gardaí, civil servants, hospital staff and so on. However, the reality is that the current Government has just taken the purse from Fianna Fáil and has kept dipping into the same purse. We are arguing that there is money outside of that purse in the hands of the very wealthy of this country and that this money has not been touched. They are responsible for contributing to the economic crisis in this country, yet they have not been touched. The Government is continuing with the same policy of going back into the pockets of ordinary people.

The programme of austerity, which the Government intends to continue, has squeezed any prospect of growth out of the economy. This is the key factor in why we are heading towards an inevitable sovereign default. There have been cries that the minimum wage has been reversed, but that has not touched the coffers of this Government. In the meantime, the Government is looking at making an impact on the lives of more than 250,000 low-paid workers in the hotel and catering industry, by attacking the EROs and discussing the JLCs. While pay packets have been absolutely hammered by the introduction of the universal social charge, the Government has not reversed that decision. It intends to bring in more taxes that will impact on the pockets of ordinary people. This will curtail growth further, because when people do not have money to spend, that affects small local businesses and the jobs they provide, and it ends up impacting on the lives of ordinary people.

There are to be cuts to our hospital services and our education system, with a cap on SNEs and other resource teachers. What might happen in the event of a default is happening anyway. It is like the slow strangulation of our economy. The fact is that we are going to default. Even the right wing economists are saying that there will be a default. It is a question now of whether we default on our own terms or on the terms of the IMF and the EU. We should default as soon as possible on our terms and discuss what we can do in that case.

The Portuguese have already got a better deal than ourselves. This came out over the last few days, but we will have to see the devil in the detail because they are going through an election and much of the detail will be withheld until afterwards. We can look at a different deal for Ireland. We can put in place alternatives that keep our economy and public sector ticking over. We will continue to outline them. We have called for the reorganisation of the banking system into a State banking sector. We want to close budget deficits with wealth taxes and end tax exemptions. We have seen a Minister, already a very wealthy man, avail of a tax exemption for stately homes and people like him line their own pockets. There is around €11 billion in tax breaks at the moment.

There should be caps on wages of anything earned over €100,000. There should also be a tax on pensions over €100,000. We do not have to renegotiate these contracts, we can bring in a tax of 95 cent on the euro to deal with this. It can be applied to civil servants.

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