Anne Ferris (Wicklow, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We are here this evening discussing this Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2013 for one reason, namely, a Fianna Fail-led Government ran Ireland's economy like a slot machine that was rigged to pay out every time until the money was gone. Ireland had to borrow big to pay its debts. The troika budget was one of the conditions of this bailout. The money borrowed from the troika is just part of the problem. Due to a lack of proper oversight during those years, the total foreign debt owed by government, struggling businesses and householders in this country stands at €1.64 trillion. Every man, woman and child in this country now carries a debt burden of €358,000. Every 70 year old pensioner, unemployed young person and five year old child carries a debt burden ten times larger than the average EU citizen.

The big problem with large debts is that they generate high interest. Next year, the cost of servicing the State's €204 billion portion of this huge debt will be about €9 billion. The loan repayments alone are three and a half times the target set for this budget. If this enormous debt did not exist, we could put money into the economy rather than take it out.

My heart goes out to the pensioners who in their thousands stood outside this building this week. They built our country. Our pensioners are the people born in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. They never thought during their working lives that they would live through the destruction of the Irish economy, not once, but twice. The pensioners of Ireland experienced first-hand the effect and after-effects of the other economic war caused by Fianna Fáil. Let us call it EW1, economic war 1.

When today's Irish 80 year olds were just five year old children, Fianna Fáil started an economic war with the United Kingdom by withholding land annuities. In retaliation, the UK applied import tariffs on Irish cattle. Fianna Fáil then slapped duties on coal imported from Britain. From 1932 to 1938, cattle exports declined by 66%. Irish industry could not afford to manufacture. The domestic economy froze because nobody had money to spend. It was a political and economic disaster and our current generation of pensioners paid the price during their youth and middle years with poverty and emigration that lasted into the 1960s. In 2010, Fianna Fáil boiled the economy dry for a second time and launched economic war 2 on the citizens of Ireland. The only casualty of an Irish economic war is the Irish people.

The pensioners of Ireland bear the scars of two economic wars, EW1 and EW2. They do not need added pressure resulting from whether they are entitled to a medical card. All week I have been receiving calls from people who do not need to worry about their cards but who are worried all the same.

I have welcomed the incentives in this budget aimed at creating more jobs. There are signs everywhere that the economy is turning around. Retail numbers are up, as are exports. As the economy grows and tax income recovers, it will no longer be necessary to rob the piggy bank of the public services to pay the interest on the debts of the Fianna Fáil Government. There will be new opportunities to negotiate better ways of paying the debt, but the actual borrowed sums are still hanging over Ireland in the form of Government debt, business debt and mortgage debt.

I want to believe that our pensioners, who survived EW1, will come out on the other side of Fianna Fáil's second economic war. For that reason I am calling on my Government colleagues to approach the next budget - the first post-troika budget - by beginning an open national discussion about the feasible ways of reducing the debt, and not just the payments on the debt. It is an important topic to the five year olds of 1933, the five year olds of 2013 and everybody in between, and it cannot be avoided for any longer. I regret there is nobody from Fianna Fáil present to hear that, because they bear the responsibility.

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