Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When our folks were putting together a sense of this in response to the questions put to the Taoiseach, I asked them to find something notable the Taoiseach had said. When we looked at something he might have said that was notable at Davos four months ago, I came on something he had said there two years ago. When he brought forward his analysis of an géarchéim eacnamaíochta, he said: "People went mad borrowing in a system that spawned greed, went out of control and led to the crash." That analysis of the causes of the crisis in the economy, to which I assume he still sticks, was wrong then and is wrong today.

It just shows one. That was the Taoiseach's input. In response to Deputy Martin, the Taoiseach said that if these guys are a bit aloof and elite, there are politicians there to keep them right. However, he told them that this was Paddy gone mad. He knows that people did not go mad and did not do this out of greed. They were buying family homes or providing apartments for their children and were cajoled into borrowing large sums of money during boom times. The price was driven through the roof because of successive Fianna Fáil Governments' policies. That is what the people are being punished for, not their own greed. It is because of the greed of bankers, developers and speculators. Fianna Fáil takes the blame of course, but the Taoiseach was the then-Leader of the Opposition. Whatever he says about Sinn Féin, I would like to think he gives us credit for trying to hold the Government to account, whether he agrees with us or not. He was there at the time and the Government is only as good as the Opposition.

We now come to his last visit, when the Taoiseach said that emigration to foreign parts was good for citizens and a way of gaining experience which could be used on their return home. Those remarks were irresponsible and offensive. The two main failures of the two States on this island, particularly this one and particularly of its ruling elites and Governments, are partition and emigration. It moulds our psychology as a people that so many generations of our people have been forced to leave. Travel is good and it broadens the mind, but one should not be forced to do so and to rear children abroad. The Taoiseach must have met people, especially those from Mayo, who have put children through college who are now in Australia, Canada and London. I meet them all the time. Those people have grandchildren who are not coming home.

On the world stage, the leader of the State has said two notable things at recent meetings of this grouping at Davos. Imagine a town of 400,000 which has been emptied. What about getting them back? What incentive is there for someone out there to come back? They did not leave for experience other than in the case of a very small minority. Many of them went because they did not want to stay here where they could not make a living. Many went because their friends had gone. I remember meeting a very old man who is one of the last of those who left the Blasket Islands. I met him in Springfield, Massachusetts, and he spoke to me in Gaeilge. I asked him why there were so many of his peers there. He asked me if I had ever seen a flock of birds flying and said that where one comes down, another and another follows until the whole flock comes down. That is what we see. I try to get to Donegal. Scores of young men and women from the parish I visit are working in the mines. They found out about their friends being there and they went because they could not get jobs or a home here. The Irish youth unemployment rate is approximately 23% and it is irresponsible for the Taoiseach to speak so casually while on foreign trips, especially to a gathering like that at Davos, which is elite, and particularly when there is nothing in place here to induce those folks to come back.

Hopefully, there will be space for them to come back, but I ask the Taoiseach if he regrets making those two remarks. It is little wonder that those in the elites in the European Union and at events like Davos think they can do what they want when the leader we sent to represent us comes off with such remarks. The Taoiseach is not Davos's man in Ireland, he should be Ireland's man in Davos. Would the Taoiseach like to take this opportunity to correct the record?

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