Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

-----was that it first had to deal with the problem of the banks. There were six dysfunctional banks and there was confusion, uncertainty and concern. That was dealt with by clear decisions of the Government and the follow-on from that is under way.

The scope available to the Minister, Deputy Noonan, and the Government in respect of stimulating the economy is not to the extent that we would like. I am sure that the Minister would love to have told the Dáil yesterday that the Government had €3 billion to allocate to the economy which would be spent on job creation. What we had was €450 million from a very modest levy on pension funds that were built up with generous tax reliefs and the adjustment of moneys within voted moneys for Departments. This will be used to provide the stimulus to the extent that we can in these circumstances. The Government focused on the areas where job creation is of such critical importance and a priority, namely, in tourism, construction, in terms of schools and the retrofit scheme and in the protection from complete disintegration of many the roads of the country and so on. That will provide, as the Deputy Adams knows, jobs and employment for people who are currently out of work.

This is not a case of having millions of euro to spend where huge firms can come in and do most of the work by machinery. This is labour intensive work and it is designed to create a sense of confidence and will in its own way leverage private spending as well, which is good for the economy. It will also release some of the savings that people have put by because of the concerns and anxiety that they had.

Anybody in politics would love to be able to say there was a huge amount of money to spend. It is very easy to govern when the State is awash with a surplus of funds coming in from taxes, even though that structure in previous years was clearly built on a foundation of sand. We are being very realistic here in sorting out the banks, creating an incentive and an initiative in investment in confidence for job creation and moving on to deal with our budget deficit.

We live in the world of reality here, as does Deputy Adams, and what we are doing is within our range. This was not over-hyped. The expectations were never that it would remove 440,000 people off the live register but it is designed to create the first steps towards confidence and progress and people having jobs and opportunities to go to work.

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