Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy must be aware, as everybody else is, that we are working within fiscal constraints that have been set by the troika. It happened before we took office but the country reached a point where, effectively, it could not borrow in the lending markets. There was only one place we could borrow and that was under the most strict conditions, of which the Deputy is aware. The conditions are about hitting key budgetary targets each year and the Government must do that. Our stimulus is about how, even within those targets, one can generate imaginative thinking that can create a stimulus package. Everything we are doing is of the type the Deputy has mentioned. It is about identifying new revenue streams, such as in the water sector, so we can have an investment programme to upgrade the key infrastructure. It is about taking funds in the National Pensions Reserve Fund and setting up, for example, the small and medium enterprises, SME, equity and lending fund which we are doing. That is the way in which we seek to drive a stimulus even though we are constrained by the international agreements we had to enter into to hit certain key borrowing targets. We are operating under severe constraints but, within that, we are producing the type of innovative strategies that can make a difference. The Deputy pretends those constraints are not there.

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