Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I appeal to the media to scrutinise that statement. We are borrowing €12 billion or so every year and €8 billion of that goes towards interest on debt. Will the Taoiseach please acknowledge that fact? It would be helpful in having a serious debate. A total of €8 billion, which is two thirds of what we are borrowing, is being used to pay interest on debts. That is a fact. Please admit it.

Is the Taoiseach not living in a dream world when he says confidence is returning to the private sector? Is he not aware that the purchasing managers' index in the past week or so has reported the largest fall in employment in the manufacturing sector in four years in this economy and that manufacturing overall has, for the past four years, fallen at the fastest pace in recent times? The export and manufacturing sectors, on which the Taoiseach has placed so much emphasis in pointing to the so-called successes of our economy, is seeing an unprecedented decline. It is just about balanced by some expansion in the service sector but I put it to the Taoiseach that when manufacturing is in trouble, the economy as a whole is in very serious trouble.

Is it not a fact that Ireland was the guinea pig? We were the laboratory experiment for an austerity policy that has devastated our economy. As that experiment is being applied to the rest of Europe, just as we predicted would happen, it is devastating the rest of the European economy to the point that even the think tank, Bruegel, which presented a report at the recent European Council, the European Commission, the OECD and, most recently, the Italian Prime Minister all say the austerity strategy has failed and something must be done about it. The Taoiseach says he is not a fan of austerity and that what we need is competitiveness and structural reform but this same argument is being made in Europe. Again, this is an Orwellian playing with words. Austerity involves competitiveness measures and so-called structural reform. Competitiveness is a code word for attacking pay and conditions. Structural reform is a code word for privatisation. So when the Taoiseach says that we are in favour of alternatives to austerity, what he is really saying is that the alternative to austerity is more austerity but with different names.

We on this side of the House are asking the Taoiseach to genuinely consider alternatives given the mounting evidence that policy that has been pursued and that has focused on propping up private banks, imposing cuts in pay and conditions and privatising sectors of the economy, has demonstrably failed; that European economies are like lemmings following each other over the cliff into economic depression; and that we need to seriously debate and scrutinise alternatives and consider the alternative proposed by those on the Left not just in this country but across Europe. Such an alternative focuses on redistribution through taxes on wealth and capital and redirecting those moneys into public investment and enterprise, employment and infrastructure projects that would put people back to work and facilitate growth. I put it to the Taoiseach that if we do not go down that road, we are stumbling from a recession into an economic depression. Is that not what all the evidence is mounting up to say? Is that not clearly apparent when even those in the middle and on the right of the economic and political spectrum accept that the strategy is failing and that we need to move beyond political point scoring, look at the facts and look at alternative ways of dealing with the crisis?

See this speech in context