Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his remarks. We need to ensure that it does and the Government is determined to do so. Stability will be required. Instability exists outside our own environment and might have an impact upon us. We do not know what will happen, for example, in eastern Europe, particularly in Ukraine, and such factors have a destabilising effect.

We can control what we can do here and it is important that we maintain the successful policies of the past four years. The Central Bank has indicated that growth reached 5% last year. We expect growth of 4% this year and sustainable growth at that level for the following years. Unemployment is now at 10.5% and will be in single digits this year, please God. In 2011, we did not envisage that being achieved so quickly. Even the projections of the cost of debt servicing in 2011 which we had expected by now to be of the order of €11 billion annually is actually €7 billion because we have had four renegotiations of our debt. We have rolled up our sleeves and done the job of renegotiating all the debt issues. We have focused on growth and job creation. We obviously need to keep a firm hand on the tiller and the Government will certainly continue to do that.

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