Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

It is not surprising that the Taoiseach would get on well with the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, since both come from neoliberal and conservative political parties on the right wing of the political and economic spectrum. Apart from the business of adding a few ha'pennies of trade to the pence of trade while the Taoiseach was there, did he discuss with the Prime Minister the bigger picture and did he learn any lesson from Japan's disastrous economic situation of the past 15 years? I am sure that his advisers briefed him on the large property bubble that was built up, the land bubble, the significant speculation that occurred and the inevitable crash, as is part of the workings of capitalism, which led to a disastrous deflationary period for a considerable amount of time. As a result, the debt-GDP ratio is 230%.

The Taoiseach seems to have learned much in Japan but where the two key elements of the Prime Minister's policy, those being, fiscal stimulus and monetary easing, are concerned, the Taoiseach is continuing with the exact opposite - failed policies of austerity, bank bailouts, etc. This policy failed in Japan for years, requiring the turn by its current Government. Investment was also very low because big business was not re-investing sufficiently to create a stimulus.

While I am always cautious about what the outcome of "Abe-nomics" will be, given the fact that we are still working within the parameters of the capitalist economic and financial markets, the internal workings of which caused the ongoing crisis regardless of who was in charge, has the Taoiseach considered how he needs to learn from the deflationary situation that existed in Japan and the requirement for a change in policy in Ireland to end the austerity, and for major public investment in real job creation?

I will ask a last question.

I am sure that the Taoiseach was probably quite envious of the prime minister and his party, considering that they have been in power since 1955, apart from about four years, in spite of a very dubious history of the American CIA fashioning quite a bit of their policy over the years, corruption scandals and all the rest of it. In spite of the Taoiseach's close conservative links with the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, I do not wish him similar success in terms of longevity.

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