Tom Barry (Cork East, Fine Gael)

I hate to spoil the party but the Fianna Fáil Party has identified all the solutions after ten months of a new Government. I have made a point of not criticising that party in this House or on the doorsteps because the electorate can make its own democratic decisions. However, I feel obliged to answer this motion in a forthright manner.

With the possible exception of Deputy Moynihan, Fianna Fáil Deputies do not understand farming. They think crop rotation means wheat, beet and bungalows. The bungalows have stopped, the beet is gone and we are left with continuous wheat. That is not sustainable farming. Former Minister Mary Coughlan shut down the sugar industry in Ireland. She wanted more stamp duty and she had a golden share that she did not use. Mr. Liam Carroll, who owned 30% of Greencore, was the first person admitted into NAMA. We will be paying promissory notes for the next ten years to sort out that mess. AIB also had shares in Greencore and is equally responsible.

We need to work our way out of this mess but we will not do so by means of a pyramid scheme. The last Government operated great pyramid schemes until they fell apart. Have the Members opposite ever created a job, beside their own? It is difficult to take their criticisms seriously given that they never had to worry about finding the money to pay their employees next week. I do not like to criticise the previous Administration but it is difficult to hold back when motions like this are moved in the House.

Fine Gael was criticised for not bringing the bondholders or implementing haircuts but breeding comes out in the eyes of a cat. Fianna Fáil burned the farmers of Ireland in 1932. The land annuities the British Government loaned to Irish farmers were withdrawn. That landed us in the economic war. It was terrible because we decided to boycott English goods in retaliation for the tariffs imposed on our exports. That crippled our economy and the United Left Alliance should study what happened during that period. Funds were diverted from annuities to local government to buy votes. The Land Commission transferred land from widows to their own people to buy votes. That happened in my locality until the 1960s. The left should bear in mind Edmund Burke's advice to resort to experience rather than consult with invention.

Fianna Fáil burned the public service. It increased the number of public servants and gave them more money to buy their votes. When it had no more money to give, it doled out big pensions and lump sums. Then a brilliant person decided to benchmark the people who had retired. How can one be productive when one is retired? This vote buying exercise landed us in our current predicament. They are burned now because they went out to spend according to what they were earning. They believed their future was safe but they are screwed, they are gone and they are caught. It is terrible because Fianna Fáil burned them and their children's futures. The very people it bought off were hurt the most. The experience gives a new meaning to the acronym "B and B", namely, burn and buy. The gas thing is that Fianna Fáil burned its own house at the end of the day. It is terrible that a fine party has been reduced to what it is now.

The Fianna Fáil Deputies went to the fountain of confession, dipped themselves in the water of forgiveness, stood up and said "We are all better". I do not buy it, and neither do the people of this country or the employers of this country. I suggest that maybe it is time for them to wrap it up. They do not need to rebrand. They should wrap up the whole blessed thing and put the deficit in their funds into NAMA. However, there is no need to make that decision tonight. They should go home for Christmas, the season of goodwill, sit down and look at what has happened, and, unless they intend to come up with constructive motions in the future, admit that there is no room for them. If Fianna Fáil's agricultural policies had been followed, P.J. Sheehan, who sat here for many a year, would have been right, because all we would have been left with is bullocks, briars and bachelors.

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