Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour)

There is no party in this House that has a monopoly of wisdom in terms of what the people are suffering. Everyone in the House knows the terrible state the country is in and the difficult circumstances faced by people in their everyday lives. Every discussion, be it on television, radio or in the newspapers, is about the debt crisis in Europe, the slowing down of the world economy, the deficit crisis in this country given that we are borrowing €44 million a day or the implications and ramifications of the EU-IMF bailout programme. I listened to the five speeches made by Sinn Féin Members yesterday and they did not mention any of these topics once. The basic political and economic scenario facing the country has been ignored in Sinn Féin's Local Government (Household Charge)(Repeal) Bill. The circumstances I have outlined are directly impacting on the country and dictating the decisions that must be made to balance the books. They are not popular or easy, but they must be made. The five Deputies in question, Deputies Stanley, Ó Caoláin, Mac Lochlainn, Colreavy and McDonald, took no time to mention any of these issues when they came here to lecture us on taxation and economic policy.

Deputy Stanley has said politics is about making the right decisions, not the easy ones, and improving quality of life for ordinary people on low and middle incomes and that trading on empty truths does not pay bills, create jobs or strengthen communities. This comes from Sinn Féin which 16 months ago ran an election campaign in which it stated we did not need the EU-IMF deal and could survive on our own. It claimed the National Pension Reserve Fund could be used to fund services. I do not know how many times it has spent it by now; it must have been spent six times over in the last 16 months. Sinn Féin wanted to default, but it also wanted to borrow. It wanted the banks to collapse but lending to flow. It had every sort of populist economic fantasy. The truth is its economic policies have no credibility and there is no substance to them, except short-term political gain.

Deputy Stanley has also said to Labour Party backbenchers that the members of the public who elected them are sick to the back teeth of hearing that things could be worse, that they could not be worse for families. My own personal view as a Labour Party backbencher, because we are separate parties with separate ideologies in a coalition, is that a Fine Gael Government would not have reversed the cut in the minimum wage. I have talked to Deputies and there was definite consternation about it.

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