Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

I do not propose to look in detail at the mechanics of how the State and its citizens should handle the €30.6 billion, rising to €74 billion by the time it is repaid in 2031, of toxic debt of the zombie Irish bank which is now known as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation. I always get suspicious when I see people or corporations changing their names. The reason I do not propose to go into those mechanics is that other Sinn Féin Deputies have covered or will cover these aspects in the course of their contributions today and tomorrow. Instead, I want to express how the citizens of the constituency I represent, Sligo-North Leitrim, and other constituencies feel about all of this.

Talk of billions sometimes goes over people's heads as the sum is too enormous for them to understand its impact. However, if there is one thing I know, and I detect it every day, it is that people are very angry and frustrated that our economic sovereignty has been surrendered by the previous and present Governments, the latter of which promised things would be different if it was elected. The present Government was elected with a massive majority but nothing has changed. Our citizens and their children will be handing over taxpayers' money to the disgraced Anglo Irish Bank gamblers for the next 20 years.

People are close to losing all hope and feel powerless to do anything about it. This is the worst aspect. People are losing hope in the country, hope for themselves and hope for their children and grandchildren. What impact does this have on Irish people, apart from the ignominy of having France, Germany, the ECB and the IMF dictating our future and our potential as citizens of an independent republic?

Let us consider those dependent on social security, who can barely survive on the weekly income they receive. The cost of electricity, gas, school books, school transport and clothing are all going up while the supports that were in place are coming down. It can literally be a choice between giving school books to a child or having a dinner. That is the choice people on social security now face. Supplementary welfare officers are run off their feet. The automatic answer now seems to be "no" and if people really need it, they will appeal and join the long appeals waiting list. Students are facing the dreaded registration bills and in many cases will have their maintenance grants more than halved because of changes in the school proximity rules. We are going back to the bad old days when education was available only to the very wealthy, which is a disgrace.

Low income earners, who are not only in the tax net but must also pay all the other stealth taxes that have been and are being brought in, are having their pay packets eaten into. These include the many thousands of low and average paid civil and public service workers who had their meagre incomes slashed while at the same time being vilified wrongly as the cause of the problem by some politicians and some media commentators. Despite agriculture being the poster boy of the Irish economy at present, farmers are generally living on less than half the average industrial wage, and in the constituency I represent would be on less than half of that again. How long can they contribute to national economic survival and improvement? What of the young people who have left their homes for Australia, Canada or God knows where? What hope have they got? They know they will not be coming home any time soon. The legacy is people who need health care being on a waiting list to get on a waiting list for hospital care, and special needs assistants in overcrowded classes.

It could be so different. Sinn Féin has put forward credible and costed alternatives and will do so again in its pre-budget submission. I hope the Government Deputies read our proposals and support them. I hope we will not have the usual shouting and slagging, where abuse replaces logic and political point scoring and not resolving our problems becomes the objective.

I remind the Minister of the key message from the Nyberg report, the post mortem into our financial meltdown, that there was evidence of herd mentality and a reluctance to listen to alternative viewpoints. It is history repeating itself.

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