Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the previous speaker stated, the debate is a timely opportunity to look back over the changes under way in the economy since the Government took office approximately a year and a half ago.

Sadly, the consequences of a long period of reckless ill-disciplined governance, which preceded the current coalition and which unleashed economic chaos in the State, are being suffered by citizens. Most people out there are taking some amount of pain. That will take time to erode because what was left was a mess. There was dysfunctional Government for a long number of years, even before the bailout. On simple matters, the management of the economy was wrong. I will give a few examples to prove the point.

In the years 2001 to 2008, public sector staff numbers rose by 70,000 or 80,000, but there was no major increase in service of which we could be proud. It is not the staff's fault because they were put into a system that was not reformed. Part of the new Government approach is trying to fix those systems of governance.

The spend in nearly every Department rose by almost 100% over the same period - in some cases, by 160% - with no real results and no real monitoring. The view was it did not really matter, there were plenty of incoming taxes and one should merely dish them out. Former Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, especially, and Fianna Fáil have a great deal to answer for in terms of the way they managed this country which ended up in us needing a bailout.

Another prime example would be the free travel scheme which was mentioned in a debate a couple of weeks ago. Over a short period of years, the costs of running the scheme rose from €45 million to €70 million and yet the numbers using it only rose by 20%. The costs rose by 60% plus where the increases in activity were only 20%.

The whole lot was allowed to get completely out of control. In the middle of all that, to fuel electioneering and stunts to win votes, taxes were reduced. There was an increase in public service expenditure, an increase in public service numbers employed and reduced taxes. It was not sustainable and it gave false hope. It was left to the Government to come in and reform that, and part of that involves adjusting the costs of running this country back to a sustainable level. The problem is that people were given false hope and they made commitments, got mortgages and short-term debts such as on credit cards, car loans, etc. It is painful, while one's income is being reduced and there are various additional charges, disposable income is falling but debts are still there, but there is no other way round that. There is no choice because they were living a lie, thanks to the previous Government.

It was not sustainable and was built on false taxes. In my early years as a Deputy in this House I listened to Deputies Michael Noonan, Richard Bruton, Enda Kenny and many others telling the Government that what it was doing was not sustainable. It is always thrown back at my party that we wanted increases in services, but that is not correct. Whenever we put forward proposals for increasing services or for new spending, they were always well costed and worked out. They always came with the red-line warning that there were savings to be made with reform of the systems. If those systems had been reformed, the then Government could have achieved what we, in opposition, wanted without spending more or increasing taxes.

Our budget adjustments for the period from 2008 to 2014 will be the second largest after Greece. The bank rescue, which I referred to as the fault of the last Government, has added 26% to our budget deficit when measured as a percentage of GDP. This has not been easy and every man, woman and child has been affected. However, there are enough analysts willing to deal with the negative elements of this situation but I will try to focus on the positives because people need to know that there is hope. They need to know that there is a future for this country.

Given that Deputy Adams is currently in the Chamber, I wish to point out that his party has never made clear to the people that if there was never a banking crisis, there would still be a problem with our budgets. There is still a massive deficit to be tackled. The actual cost, on a yearly basis, of the increased borrowings because of the banks is probably in the order of €1.5 billion but our deficit is between €15 billion and €16 billion and it was over €20 billion at one point. If there never was a banking crisis, we would still have a budgetary crisis because of the way the country's finances were mismanaged for years. Money was spent and committed long term but the income streams were not viable in the long term. I have listened to Deputy Adams on countless occasions talking about this and he seems to continually want to mislead people and convince them that the bailout money we received from the troika is just for the banks. It is not. The majority of that money was to help to run this country for three or four years while we try to get the deficit down to a sustainable level. A year or two ago, Deputy Adams was advocating that we pay none of the bank debt, although he seems to have changed his stance on that somewhat. If we had taken Deputy Adams's approach, nobody would have given us the money we needed to run the country for four or five years. The evidence is that any country, be it Iceland or Argentina, that reneges on its debts has to be in a position to survive for four or five years on its own resources until the markets will loan it some money again. Deputy Adams has never explained how he would run this country for three to five years. He was able to talk his way around it and with his magic pen, produce figures for the first year. However, he and his party have never spelled out how he would run this country without outside assistance while not forcing people to take cutbacks of the full amount, in year one or year two, of approximately €16 billion. That level of cutbacks would wreck this economy. What we are trying to do, in a balanced and logical way, is to gradually reduce the deficit, in agreement with our European partners, to a level which is sustainable. Perhaps Deputy Adams will take the opportunity today to explain how he would run the country for three or four years without outside assistance.

I have seen the jobs plan launched by Sinn Féin this week and there are some nice ideas contained therein. There is not much that is original but there are some positive elements there and I have no problem in giving credit where credit is due. There are some good ideas in the plan and the Government must examine them all. However, many of the schemes are about scale, namely, scaling up schemes that are already in operation and the Government would love to do that if it had the money. Everyone is in favour of stimulus plans if we have the money. In that context, I must point out that within Sinn Féin's jobs plan there is a €3 billion shortfall, which we are told the party will find by budget time. It is not credible to produce a jobs plan, giving false hope to people, with a €3 billion hole in it. It is difficult to pick out the good elements of a plan when there is a large black hole in the middle of it. Furthermore, the majority of the plan involves increasing the scale of schemes that are already under way, which we would love to do if we had the cash.

I wish to speak about positives today, to outline the real strengths of the Irish economy and to highlight those areas that will provide economic growth, jobs for our citizens and assist in our recovery. Our economic recovery must be export led and indeed, it is thus. Between July and August 2011, exports increased by 16% or €1.26 billion. This followed on from an increase of €452 million between June and July. Comparing August 2012 with August 2011, the value of exports has increased by €1.27 billion or 18%, leaving a trade surplus in the year to date of €30 billion. The scale of our progress in this area is well demonstrated when we compare ourselves to our neighbours in the United Kingdom. The UK had a trade deficit of €4.2 billion in August 2012, up from €1.7 billion in July. This shows just how difficult conditions are in the international markets yet Ireland's exports continue to remain strong. That is because we have brought back stability, competitiveness and hope. This country's reputation has been repaired in the last 18 months and people want to do business with us and want to buy our products. Our exporters, be they multinationals or indigenous companies, are hungry to increase their market share and are out there, pushing very hard, with the help of various Ministers and Departments.

People might not realise this is going on, given what they hear from some of the Opposition speakers and read in the Sunday newspapers. There is a duty on everybody and particularly politicians and those in the media, to give people some hope. I do not want to ever sugar-coat or deny that there are tough times ahead but people need to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I meet too many people, on a daily basis, who have no hope in their eyes. Yet, if they looked at the facts, trusted the facts and believed what they are being told, they would have hope. If some Members of the Opposition, on the odd day, spoke positively about things when they are positive, that would be good. There is nothing wrong with criticising the Government for doing wrong, which is the job of the Opposition but there is also a duty on us to give people hope. Parents need to know that there is a future for their children. Without hope, we have nothing.

All of the facts and the signs point towards hope. New jobs are being created. I have heard people, chiefly members of Sinn Féin, claim that there is no private sector investment in this country but that is completely untrue. We could not have new jobs announcements every week if there was no investment. Figures are regularly quoted which are almost three years out of date. There was a reduction of private sector investment of €30 billion prior to 2010 but the situation has completely changed since then but that is not mentioned. For the sake of proper politics and for the sake of the sanity of our people, I urge Deputies to look at the positives sometimes. I have no problem with looking at negatives but we must find a balance.

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