Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Irish people and their economy are feeling the effects of the Taoiseach's ambitionless policies. We have faced the reality this year, despite the predictions from a few years ago, that there has been zero growth in the economy. Nevertheless, the introduced budget has gone beyond the necessary targets set by the troika. The troika deficit target for this year was 5.1% of GDP but Fine Gael and the Labour Party have signed up to a plan which has the deficit at 4.8% of GDP. The Minister for Finance told us this equates to €480 million of austerity measures that are not required to meet the troika deficit. Why does the Government believe that putting the foot on the accelerator of austerity will do anything for growth? The Minister vehemently stated that we could not cut ourselves out of recession.

Our proposals demonstrate how a multi-billion euro stimulus package can create around 100,000 jobs.

That is how to drive economic activity, but what we have is the Government's third budget that tells us yet again it will use the National Pension Reserve Fund of €6.4 billion.

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