Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The stimulus budget the Government spoke about a number of months ago amounted to approximately €2.5 billion. If one considers the cut in capital expenditure in the budget last year, which will obviously continue for the next number of years, the balance is that the Government stimulus adds €800,000 over six years. The idea of a stimulus is to impact the State with such a large investment that it radically changes the gear of the economy and points it in a new direction. As has been said, much of the investment that will be put into Irish Water will go on the metering of houses. What change in productivity will that bring to Irish society and its economy? It will bring none.

The Minister mentioned that the current ideas of stimulus were somehow simplistic. That is incredible because Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and John Maynard Keynes, who were Nobel Prize winners, said the best time to make an investment is when the economy is down. It does not make sense to have a stimulus investment when the economy is up. A stimulus investment only makes sense in this scenario.

With regard to there not being opportunities, the National Pensions Reserve Fund has billions of euro that are available to the State. The private pension industry is looking for an area in which to invest and has told me that the Government has not approached it with proper investment opportunities. We are in a critical situation and this is a burning issue throughout society. The Government must step up to the plate.

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