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

Ar dtús báire, ba mhaith liom a rá go raibh mé ag iarraidh moladh a thabhairt don Rialtas maidir leis an gcaoi ina bhfuil na focail bhreátha a bhí i gclár an Rialtas, a shocraigh siad trí bliana ó shin, á gcur i bhfeidhm acu. Bréag mhór a bheadh ann a leithéid a dhéanamh, áfach, ós rud é nach raibh focail bhreátha ar bith sa chlár sin. Ar an drochuair do phobal na tíre seo, ná raibh fís ná athrú treo ar bith soiléir sa chlár. I mo thuairim, bhris clár an Rialtais na gealltanais a thug Fine Gael agus Páirtí an Lucht Oibre, agus iarrthóirí na bpáirtithe sin, don phobal le linn toghchán na bliana 2011.

It is ironic that the programme for Government contains a quote from Albert Einstein: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” A better quote for the programme for Government, and one more often attributed to Einstein, would be his definition: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Economic and socially, this Government has been a continuation of Fianna Fáil's austerity rule in word and in deed. We have different players. We have a different Taoiseach, and he is far more sober than the last one. He does not need as many lozenges when he addresses "Morning Ireland" in the morning, but still the policies remain the same. The same austerity is crippling the Irish people.

Much space is given to banking in the programme for Government. When this Government entered power, the banks were broken and they still are. They are still not playing their role in building a proper recovery and this Government is letting them away with it. The top bankers cannot believe their luck. After Fianna Fáil, they have equally been given a weak Government that is afraid to stand up to them. We saw in the first weeks of this Government that Ministers were talking tough, talking brave, talking the talk, walking the walk, demanding that bankers come to Government Buildings to be given a dressing down for not passing on interest rate reductions. That soon faded away. No more talk of interest rate reductions when the ECB, time after time, cuts its rate. No more talk about pay cuts for senior executives in Bank of Ireland, and yesterday we had the announcement that Richie Boucher did not take one cent of a reduction in 2013.

The Government brings in a bank levy, the banks pass on the levy, the people pay and the Government says nothing. The Government looks for a pay cut from top bankers, the banks cut the pay of ordinary workers and sack them, the people pay and the Government does nothing. That is the Government's policy - do nothing. It is failing. Bank after bank is announcing cuts and redundancies. Some have disappeared from the State altogether, some are selling off their mortgages to unregulated companies and, again, the Government does nothing.

Where is the strategic investment bank promised by the Labour Party? Three years later, are we supposed to believe that a vague arrangement with a German bank is the same thing? Who is kidding whom? The number in mortgage arrears is still very high, and the banks are being left to deal with it in their own way and in their own time. The number in mortgage arrears has doubled in the first two years of this Government. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, has said he told the banks that letters threatening legal action do not constitute offers under the mortgage arrears resolution targets, but ask the Minister how he has told them, and we find that he was met with a deafening silence.

Meanwhile, a long time ago - or at least it seems a long time ago for many - the Government promised and committed to introducing a two-year moratorium on repossessions of modest family homes where a family makes an honest effort to pay their mortgage. I and thousands of families across the State must have missed the Government's small print where it stated, "...and then we will legislate so that the family home can be repossessed as a first resort", because that is what this Government has done in the removal of the protection of the family home without any sort of replacement. It was a brutal and cold decision that it took at the behest of the banks, and it was shameful.

Personal debt, especially mortgage debt, is something the Government is unable to tackle or is incapable of tackling. It has flapped around and made a lot of this, but it has achieved nothing of note. Personal debt remains a huge problem. Those who work with people in debt will say that the Personal Insolvency Act has been a damp squib at best for the many thousands of people for whom the Government thought it would be a saviour. For those who have benefited from it, however, it has been a huge relief.

Likewise, banking debt remains a crippling noose around our necks and makes economic growth difficult. There is no doubt that Fianna Fáil made a mess of it by taking on private banking debt as public debt, but this Government has failed to remove it.

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