Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on such an important topic. This morning in the House the Minister, Deputy Howlin, while taking Leaders Questions, stated that the absolute objective of this sovereign Parliament is to win back economic sovereignty for this country. Every Member in this House is well aware of the difficulties facing this country. This country lost its economic sovereignty when the IMF came to town and that is the context in which anybody should make a comment on how we get out of that position. It is the objective of this Government to win back economic sovereignty for this country and in doing that, one of the first tasks of this Government was to renegotiate the EU-IMF deal. The Government did that, and with a good degree of success. It has extended the term and renegotiated the interest rate.

An absolute feature of that deal, which the previous Government signed us up to, was a sale of State assets. Nobody wants to sell State assets but implicit in the agreement was a condition that State assets would be sold and moneys accruing from that sale would be used to pay off the debt. The Minister, Deputy Howlin, and the Minister, Deputy Noonan, have renegotiated that with the troika and they are now in a position where the proceeds from those sales or potential sales will go back into job creation. Job creation is the one element of Government policy that must and will dominate the reign of this Government because as long as this country has 450,000 people out of work the economic position will not improve. We must examine that and acknowledge the renegotiation of the EU-IMF deal and realise we are not in a position of our own making. We are in government to renew economic sovereignty. Achieving that will be difficult. Nobody wants to make decisions in this House that will impact on people who have suffered enough at the hands of the economic collapse but to win back economic sovereignty difficult decisions will have to be made, and rhetoric and economic lunacy from detractors only serves to ill-inform the entire debate.

Yesterday the Keane report on mortgage arrears marked a major milestone in terms of how we can address the problem of the thousands of people experiencing mortgage difficulty. Thousands of people find themselves in situations not of their own making. They have lost their jobs. They are now dependent on social welfare. Their incomes have been depleted. Their morale is gone and the banks want to take their houses from them but being in a position to initiate consultation and bring about a policy that addresses the problem is another aspect of Government policy that must be acknowledged.

Last month Olli Rehn stated that he thought the programme countries which sold assets should be allowed invest some of it in job creation. That emphasises my point that there has been a substantial tweaking of the deal to allow the Government reinvest moneys into job creation.

The establishment of NewERA, another significant pre-election commitment that is now Government policy, seeks to address the issue of unemployment. The strategic investment fund, another key pre-election commitment, is now being realised and will provide money for small and medium sized enterprises, get credit going and give back to small businesses the lifeblood of the availability of freely flowing credit.

We must remind ourselves that there are a number of positives about the economy because it is too easy to get lost in the negativity. There are indications that the economy is heading into a bright spot and it is borne out by recent data that shows exports hitting an all-time peak in the second quarter of the year while GDP, GNP and domestic demand all expanded in the same quarter.

I want to focus on the hypocrisy in the contribution of a previous speaker. I remind Deputy Adams that when he was an MP in West Belfast he represented an area with the highest rate of unemployment in Europe and what did he do? He abandoned it. He came down to Louth to stand for election in the Republic. That is the commitment that man has shown the unemployed in West Belfast. I will take no lectures from a party which has initiated legislation in the North to privatise ports. Private Members' business yesterday evening in this House was on the community and voluntary sector. I read into the record the number of jobs that party, with its coalition partners, the DUP, has cost voluntary and community sectors in the North of Ireland. It is engaged in austerity measures of £4 billion and its members have the temerity and cheek to come in here and start criticising Government at every possible juncture.

Reasoned, rational and constructive debate based on sound economic policies is what is required to deal with this issue. If we follow Sinn Féin economics the troika will abandon this country, there will not be anything in this country and we might as well give the key back to Brussels.

See this speech in context