Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for his question. The Deputy should not be criticising the Government for inactivity in its early days in office. We have already announced a bank restructuring programme of large proportion, renegotiated the IMF-EU agreement entered into by the previous Government, met the targets under that programme and have been assured we will be able to continue to access resources to keep the country going. We have brought forward this jobs initiative as a first step in a jobs programme to try to build confidence. Beyond that, it is difficult to have a meeting of minds with Deputy Higgins. As I understand it, the Deputy is in favour of a type of command and control economy. In that model, if one was in the old days in Romania, one could say one was creating 50,000 jobs-----

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