Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If one bypasses the bluff that comes in a constant stream from the Government benches and listens to the organisations and people who present the current situation in Ireland through a sober lens, such as NERI and TASC, economists like Sheila Killian and Michael Taft, and clear-eyed geographers like Julien Mercille, Gerry Kearns and Proinnsias Breathnach, one gets a picture of Ireland that is at odds with the Government's line. Inequality is soaring and the jobs situation continues to drive people out of the country. The Government has repeatedly undermined the safety net for the less well-off, the social state and the notion of the public good. Foreign corporations and big business are the winners in this game and everyone else is secondary. It claims that the crisis is over and that its crew navigated us out of the troubled waters. The crisis is over for those whose motto is "never let a good crisis go to waste", the defenders of the so-called free market, the private consulting groups who received hundreds of millions of euro in fees from this Government and the private businesses which filled the void in the public services.

Why is IBRC and NAMA going about their work in such secrecy? Given that they are working with public funds, why is the public not allowed to see what they are doing? Assets have been sold for a fraction of their value and people like Denis O'Brien got write downs of €230 million at the expense of the public. Apartments in this town have been sold for €100,000 each. If the Government ever gets around to it, it will cost it €200 million to build new housing. Why did it not buy these units for a fraction of their value instead of giving tax incentives to multinationals to purchase them, thereby driving up rents in the process? We now have a cartel, with too few people controlling rental properties in this city.

What has it done to fight for a write down for the general public? How can it claim to represent the will of the people of Ireland when it is hell bent on pleasing the corporate sector first? It is taking a self-satisfied tone about all the jobs it created but what kind of jobs are they? They are low paid and part-time, with no security. It is quantity not quality. Approximately 450,000 people have left this country since 2008 and they continue to leave because only the most minimal of jobs are available for them. We are driving the talent out of Ireland.

We will be paying for the bailout for the next 40 years. Given the way in which today's version of capitalism is malfunctioning and the threats to stability coming from the transatlantic trade and investment partnership, which nobody in here wants to discuss, climate change and the US global war on terror, the Government's budget looks ridiculous. The neoliberal parties which have been in power for the last 20 years were all bound to the economic philosophy of the markets which got us into this mess in the first place. The Government is bound to the interests of big business, while the less well-off are punished for being the losers in this game of winner take all.

Even the masters of the IMF have started to change their tune recently. Its recent report, Redistribution, Inequality and Growth, challenged the notion that policy makers have to choose between tackling inequality and achieving faster growth. It now argues that reducing inequality leads to faster and more durable growth. Last week, it even went so far as to break with standard neoliberal doctrine to encourage member governments to take advantage of historically low borrowing costs to boost spending on public investment. Despite all the leaks to the media in the past several weeks, we are still not getting a real housing programme or a serious housing strategy. We are put up as the poster child for austerity. Michael Taft used Eurostat figures to outline the reality of the situation, namely, that while Ireland makes up less than 1% of the EU population and the Irish economy makes up 1.2% of EU GDP, the Irish people have paid 42% of the total cost of the banking crisis. Never mind a few carrots for the voters, this budget is just another expression of the Government's passive acceptance of this state of affairs. Its real function is to ensure that the people who are not responsible for the crisis continue to pay for it.

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