Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

This reduced budget is a recipe for continued and deepening recession. At a time when we need growth and stimulus we are getting further reductions and austerity. That austerity takes more money out of the economy of Europe and the Irish economy and as a result involves more closures and increased unemployment. We are in fact continuing the current situation of austerity, stagnation and recession. The EU claims that its budget is a reduction in current budget terms, in absolute terms and as a percentage of the total income of member states. This is a disastrous response to the unprecedented levels of unemployment we see throughout the EU and in Ireland. Our situation is that 26 million are unemployed throughout Europe, over 12% of the population. Six million people under the age of 25, or 23.7%, are unemployed. In Ireland the figures are even worse, with 14.6% unemployed, over 50% of whom are long-term unemployed. Youth unemployment, while high, would be even higher but for the significant numbers emigrating, with 250 people per day leaving the country for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and further afield. This budget creates more austerity and recession and less employment. We need the opposite. Last night the President of the United States announced major infrastructural spending across America, in stark contrast to what is being done in Europe.

Growth is vitally important, all the more so when we see the targets we must meet after 2015 in the fiscal treaty, particularly the reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio from 120% to 60%. Without growth it will be impossible to pay the €4.5 billion that we will have to pay as a result.

A further effect of this counter-cyclical reduction is the appreciation of the euro against sterling and the dollar. This is very bad news for Irish exporters and Irish employment. The Government's claims to have minimised Ireland's losses or even increased our share of reduced funds ring hollow and are akin to getting a better seat on the deck of a sinking Titanic. Irish MEPs, particularly the Labour Party MEPs Nessa Childers and Phil Prendergast, should vote against this budget.

Before I finish I want to refer to the slashing of the redundant workers' fund in this budget. Support programmes for workers made redundant due to trade liberalisation have been slashed under this seven-year budget. The figure has been reduced from €3.57 billion to €1.05 billion, a reduction of €2.5 billion to less than a third of its previous value. Around 13,500 former workers at Dell, SR Technics, Waterford Crystal and others, and in the construction sector, were to be provided with tailor-made support programmes to get them back to work under the current programme. The fact that the Government did not claim the full amount under these programmes has not helped but the reduction is further compounded by the extension of the fund to cover the farming population. Farmers who effectively become redundant are of course also entitled to support, but the outcome of the new budgetary provision is that there will be very little for anybody. This is a major failure of Government and particularly of the Labour Party.

I call on Irish and Labour Party MEPs to vote against the EU budget.

See this speech in context