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

I have a big problem with the rationale behind this Bill. The legislation is part of a suite of measures that arises from our commitments under the troika programme and under the fiscal treaty, both of which I oppose. On the face of it, the Government's arguments might seem reasonable - that we require budget discipline, need to balance the books and have medium-term planning. In addition, the Government says we need monitoring of budgets to ensure that things do not become unbalanced and go out of control. Those all seem like reasonable aspirations but context is everything when it comes to the economy. This suite of measures, which arises from the fiscal treaty and the troika programme, is not taking place in normal economic conditions. It is taking place in the context of the most severe economic crisis Europe has faced since the 1930s. It is unprecedented in modern Irish history.

The Bill before us is one part of that suite of measures which comprises a new architecture of monitoring, surveillance and co-ordination. All those measures are unfolding against a background where our economy - as with other economies across Europe - has been loaded with enormous debts that are not ours. If we continue to have to pay off these debts and meet strict targets for doing so, it will consign this economy to a long-term economic depression. It will ensure that the severe suffering that ordinary workers, or vulnerable unemployed people, are enduring will continue. These measures will make it much more difficult, if not completely preclude governments from taking the sort of measures necessary to get us back on the path to growth, economic recovery and a resolution of the most pressing crisis this country and Europe are facing, which is unemployment.

The rationale behind these measures is based on a false premise, which I heard articulated by some of the earlier speakers. They said the reason we are in the current mess is because public spending got out of control. Anybody who fairly and objectively examines the circumstances that led up to the economic crash, however, will conclude that we are not in the current mess because public expenditure got out of control. Quite the opposite - it was because the markets got out of control.

In addition, there was a systematic drive over a period dating back to the late, unlamented Margaret Thatcher's ascension to power in Britain, wherein a consensus developed that we had to row back the State and public enterprise in favour of letting loose market forces. The consequences of that were devastating. Most obviously in this country it was the insanity of the property bubble, together with completely unregulated financial and housing sectors. Something as basic as housing was left in the hands of greedy, profit-driven developers whose main interest had nothing to do with a rational housing policy or providing people with affordable accommodation.

Some people claimed it was just about trying to cash in on a market and things got out of control, and it had nothing to do with public spending. However, if we had more public spending on social housing during that period we would not have had the bubble, or at least not to the extent that it occurred, and neither would we have had the devastating crash that followed. We needed to have more public spending on the provision of housing, which is a key area.

I would argue that we are likely to see more property bubbles and crashes without further public spending on social housing. It still seems that despite everything that happened, the Government's policy is to let the market and the banks sort out the housing crisis. Those are the same people who created the bubble in the first place. This is obviously long-standing Fine Gael ideology but I find it extraordinary that the Labour Party has bought into this. The Minister has managed to twist the argument from being about how to deal with the current economic crisis to one about policing and monitoring public expenditure. I do not believe for one moment that was the cause of the crisis or that it is the solution.

That argument involves forgetting about the people in the European Commission and others who will be monitoring and co-ordinating our economy. Do these people seriously deserve our respect and trust when it comes to managing budgets and having a strategy to serve the best interests of the economy and, more importantly, the citizens? I do not think they have earned that trust; quite the contrary. The European Central Bank, the European Commission and the rest are up to their necks in responsibility and culpability for what happened. They allowed the dogs - that is, the financiers and corporate interests - off the leash to indulge in riotous market forces that caused the crisis in the first place. I find the idea of embracing a plan for budgetary discipline, which is monitored by these kinds of people, to be deeply worrying.

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