Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

What I am saying is not pie in the sky. There has been a change in the debate in Europe and it is being driven by France. It is impossible to state at this point what the tangible results will be. There certainly has been at a minimum a huge change in emphasis and a very strong commitment to pursuing a jobs and growth agenda in parallel with balancing budgets in the member countries.

When Deputies speak about growth the bit they always leave out is that it must be sustainable growth. If we had €4 billion tomorrow we could get the economy growing through establishing building projects throughout the country in a Keynesian intervention. One would not quite dig holes and fill them up again, as Keynes said on one occasion, but one could find projects. However, when the money ran out they would stop and those employed would be unemployed. It would be boom and bust, and the boom and bust model has been tried in Ireland time out of mind. We need sustainable growth whereby we get the conditions for growth right and grow for 12, 15 or 20 years. This is the type of model which has been successful in other countries. We must get away from the boom and bust model. This means examining every project in the stimulus package and investing only in those which actually contribute to enhancing the infrastructure to allow the economy to grow stronger. One does not invest in projects which are purely employment creation projects.

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