Arthur Spring (Kerry North-West Limerick, Labour)

As a person who advocated against Ireland joining the euro at the time on many fronts such as our autonomy over interest rates and our ability to print money, it is surreal to be here today. If one was to look at the clever move made by Sweden and the United Kingdom at the time, it seems to have been the prudent thing to do on many fronts.

Unfortunately, when one joins a political atmosphere one must deal with legacy issues. The mess that our country is in is predominantly due to a legacy issue left by the non-Government parties of today. I hasten to add that if some of the non-Government parties had got power, we would be in a far bigger mess than we are in today. It is not merely a European problem; it is also a national problem with which we must deal.

Punitive measures were implemented as a result of the lack of ability to self-govern and the fiscal policy of the country had run us into ruin. To put it into context, we are borrowing €375 million per week to keep the country alive. There was some talk of allowing us merely use the pension reserve fund, and that would have brought us to a point where we were completely subjected to whatever rate at which the markets want to lend to us, if they would lend money to us at all. We now would be out of money and we would have no friends within the European zone.

The part most people do not understand is that it costs €52 billion to run this country per annum and there is €34 billion coming in. One need not be a rocket scientist to work out that this results in a deficit of €18 billion. There is no such thing as a printing press in the Central Bank where one may go to print money and give some of it to the rich and less of it to the poor. This is the kind of nonsense put forward by people from different organisations that will not complete the circle. It is simple to stand back and state we have a problem but we do not have solutions.

On everything that we are doing, it is not something merely for the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, who has played a massive role with the troika as well. I remind some of my Fine Gael colleagues that they need to look at this as the entire country having a problem at present and a mindset of trying to get us out of it is essential.

It is a step in the right direction. We will save between €8 billion and €9 billion over the period of ten to 15 years. We will get an extension of our loans. However, it is not the all-finishing, bells and whistles solution that we are looking for. This is not a destination; this is a journey. Every step of the way, we will have to navigate as well as we can in order to keep friends on board but also keep the country afloat. Austerity is not the solution. I am also on record in the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform as stating, as the Minister is quite aware, that there must be something more done. If there is a little bit of burden-sharing that would be good, but it is looking now like quantitative easing on an enormous scale must happen when one looks at the Italians with their debt of €1.9 trillion. For the Italians, most of that debt is held by its citizens themselves through banks.

There is an idea that there are bondholders out there who are living in the Alps or some place, with no names. The bondholders are us. They are the Deputies on the Opposition benches and the Deputies on these benches. We are the pension holders. Deputy Joe Higgins might nod his head, but his pension when he leaves this place, if he does leave it, will ultimately be paid from funds that are invested in bonds and every other diverse system throughout the world. Until people own up to where we are at, one will not come up with a cohesive approach towards a solution on this.

It is encouraging to see that we have allies. I am on an OSCE Parliamentary Assembly committee, and the social democratic grouping within that met. It gave me a platform to explain exactly where Ireland was at. One of the things that shocked me was that the Germans asked that if the position was so bad in Ireland, why were we not on the streets like the Greeks? I replied that we have had a revolution of a kind. We had an election in February and one party was decimated and two of the other parties appointed to Government in 2007 no longer exist.

We are gaining credibility and friends and solutions, but this is not what we seek in the long term. More should be done, but that will only happen with the help of the European Financial Stability Facility and the mechanisms to be put in place thereafter. This issue is complex and a great deal has been thrashed out by the finance committees and various organisations involved. I am aware the Minister is trying his best and that what I call the wartime Cabinet of the Minister, Deputy Noonan; the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin; the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste is doing everything it can. I wish there was a simple solution, but there is not. For now, I am content to support this measure. More people should consider solutions rather than identifying the problems. It is a legacy issue and I wish we could solve it more quickly.

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