Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Would the Deputy invest his money simply to throw it away? The Deputy has investments so I presume he would think carefully about what he does. He does not simply toss them away on a whim. Why would he expect anybody else not to weigh up the risks? Everybody who invests looks at low risk, medium risk and high risk investments. In fact, there is a sense that people are moving into government bonds at present. If one invests in German government bonds, one is losing money. If one invests Irish bonds, which were considered to be very high risk and are now not so high risk, one will benefit from it.

At present, a huge number of companies throughout this country are investing, be they multinational or national. The Kerry Group, for example, is investing in County Kildare with a massive research and development business. Other companies throughout the country are also investing. They might be small companies with five to ten employees and sometimes even fewer. The Deputy calls them speculators as well. They are investing. That is what everybody does when the opportunity presents. The more stability we give to this economy and the more confidence we give to people in this country, the more people will feel they can not only invest but also spend money in the economy. All the talk that this country will go down the tubes at a specific time is having a knock-on effect on the general confidence of the people who live here.

I have no wish to over-hype the recovery, because it is extremely slow, but there is a need to be at least realistic about what is happening here. The country is still in a very difficult place and the recovery is incredibly fragile, but I will not either talk it down or talk it up too much just for the sake of political gain. However, I believe the country is in a far different position now, just over two years since Mr. Ajai Chopra crossed Merrion Road. There have been some significant changes in this country and a great deal of reform has taken place. Deputy Boyd Barrett talks about cutting services. When one considers the amount of reductions that have been made in big Departments such as Health, Education and Skills and Social Protection, it is quite remarkable that we are still able to provide the current level of services. However, I am also realistic. These reductions have had knock-on effects on the people who require the services, but those effects are nothing like the despair and trouble people would have experienced if we had followed some of the policies the Deputy and some of his colleagues espouse.

There is a need for this slow approach, but things are happening. Much reform is coming and it is necessary. There is also a need to speed things up. There is a need for a follow-up agreement to the current Croke Park agreement. There is a need for the public sector unions to see it almost as their duty to speed it up and not have the usual sense which we saw develop in the Celtic tiger economy, where everybody just protected their own, held what they had and sought more for themselves. We must change that attitude and take a bigger approach to what this country needs over the course of the next decade so we can get ourselves out of the current mess. I genuinely believe this country has a great future ahead of it.

It is very important that all Members of the House take into consideration the people who most need our support. It was important that this Government reversed the cut in the minimum wage as soon as it took office, to protect people on the lowest wages. The Deputy is correct in one thing he says, which is that some unscrupulous employers have tried, and will continue to try, to reduce the wages and the terms and conditions of their employees just to maximise their profits. That must be watched and resisted at all times. However, that is not the same as what I am saying, in the context of the public sector unions, about making concessions and allowing work practices to change so we can become more efficient.

I have a great deal of experience with the health service and I have seen how changes have been implemented in the last couple of years. However, it has been mainly sectoral and has not happened across the system. Where it has happened in the system, the change has been quite dramatic. At the same time, I have seen people be very resistant to and blocking change to serve their own interests. The people who pay for that are the service users, the patients who need access to our health services. We are battling against that. I believe the public sector unions have a moral responsibility to deal with it, because we do not have the money.

I recall being in this House when the last Government was in office. When the then Minister, former Deputy Mary Harney, was asked to look at a problem in the health service, all she did was throw an extra €1 billion per year at the problem. There was no sense of reform or of structural changes within the health services. She made a botched job of the Health Service Executive, HSE, unfortunately. What went wrong with the HSE is epitomised by what happened to senior management positions. There were 70 to 80 senior management positions before the establishment of the HSE and within four or five years of it being in place, there were 800 of these senior managers. That was when it was all about throwing money at the HSE without delving into where that money was being spent and how the structures supporting the health service were being managed. That was unfortunate and we are paying for it now.

I hope the people of Greece come out of this situation, although their prospects are a great deal worse than ours. The fundamentals of their economy are much weaker than ours and their ability to get out of the current crisis is a great less than ours. By no means, however, does that mean we are out of the woods. Our economy and recovery are still fragile, but we are taking the best approach. Perhaps we should spend more time discussing what the Opposition says, as much to see if we can glean something new from it that might be useful as to expose what are sometimes downright lies about our country and knocking our country. A Deputy who claims to be an economist was speaking on one of our national radio stations and what he was saying was completely wrong. It was farcical. There is nothing worse than hearing somebody who claims to be an expert talking rubbish. One can expect it from some people who do not have a clue about what they are discussing, but people who claim to understand what is happening talking pure nonsense does not serve them and certainly does not serve the country well. We must be tougher on that type of nonsense.

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