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

It is widely accepted that these involve a large element of financial chicanery and accounting practises that are designed to avail of very low taxation rates. I am not saying all of it, but much of it has little to do with the real economy in Ireland. The CSO has been talking about contract manufacturing which bumped up GDP growth in 2014. I am sure the Minister will not deny those facts.

Austerity began under Fianna Fáil at the beginning of 2010. They were the architects. At that time, total general government quarterly expenditure was €29.2 billion in Q1 of 2010. By Q4 of 2014, however, it had fallen to €19.6 billion, a fall of nearly €10 billion. All of this and more is accounted for by an €11.3 billion fall in capital transfers at the same time. This is just stopping more bailout money going to the banks. That is why expenditure decreased. All the rest of the cuts, which were severe, did not add up to the savings, just as we warned. This is because cuts are not savings. They lead to slower growth and increased poverty, which puts pressure on different areas of Government spending.

In days to come we will no doubt hear about the Government’s commitment to investment but this is guff from a Government whose sole area of expenditure that it did manage to cut was investment. In 2010, under the Fianna Fáil-led Government, public investment was cut to €5.6 billion, but the current Government went further. By 2014, Fine Gael and Labour had slashed public investment to just €3.5 billion. They still have no investment plan, as the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, recently confirmed to me.

Does anyone seriously suggest that cutting investment is the road to recovery? Ireland does not have too many flood defence systems, too many great public health facilities or too many ultra-modern schools. We will all pay in the long run for this fiscal vandalism, dressed up as fiscal rectitude. Of course, the Government parties and Fianna Fáil see no problem with this. That is because their policies represent the interests of the few, not of the many.

All the austerity parties claim there is no alternative to austerity. They always claimed that, but they have been proved wrong. Sinn Féin has consistently argued that there is an alternative to these policies. Today we heard that action will be taken on mortgage arrears and interest rates. Is this from the same Government that must have quoted a thousand times by now that there is a memorandum of understanding and that it cannot interfere with the banks? Is this from the same Government that voted down my Bill to protect the family home, which could have gone some way towards preventing the tsunami of repossession proceedings? Is this from the same Government that allowed the mortgage crisis to double in the first two years of its term?

We hear the Government is going to lay down the line with the banks on interest rates. Are we supposed to take this seriously? How many times have the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance told us they were powerless? How many times have we - not for months, but for years - asked the Minister to call in the banks concerning unsustainable mortgage debt and variable interest rates? Yet we will have action now, as there is the smell of an election in the air.

As a republican party, we stand for equality. The burden of the crisis should have fallen on those who caused it and could afford to bear it. We know this Government waited barely weeks before throwing out its promise to burn the bondholders. It caved in, just like Fianna Fáil before, to the ECB and not for the last time. Let us be clear that Sinn Féin’s way is definitely not Frankfurt’s way. Sinn Féin has a vision whereby banks owned by the people are not facilitated in evicting families and are not allowed to dictate government policy. Under Fine Gael and Labour, the banks own the people. Sinn Féin would say “No way” to banks that are trying to rip off homeowners and evict them in order to fatten up their own accounts.

The recovery could be broad-based and could benefit everyone. If policies are changed, it still can be fair and can be broad-based. We can build a country that works for all of its citizens. We have an alternative. We have said that all priorities in the past should have been different. We have called for investment in our future and protection for the hardest hit. The policy of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour was that no bondholders would be left behind. Even now, KPMG is preparing to pay out, on behalf of the people, hundreds of millions of euro to junior bondholders and vultures at IBRC. That is the legacy of this Government's banking policy.

A recovery should mean more gardaí in Garda stations, more nurses in our hospitals, and more teachers for our children. Not teachers on JobBridge schemes, but young teachers who are paid. The improvement in the Government's finances should be used to support a real recovery. It should be a recovery that benefits the majority, not a giveaway that benefits those who are best off. We need to invest in our shared future. Building affordable homes is an acute necessity in many areas. It creates decent, well paid jobs and new homes generate income for the Government that can be used for reinvestment purposes.

Today's debate is really about a Government trying to get re-elected by promising the moon and stars in its nod-and-wink fashion, having stolen the shirt off people’s backs. The Fianna Fáil Party is trying out a new policy because the Government stole its old ones. It should be about laying out a vision of a sustainable and fair recovery as we approach the centenary of the Rising. That is the debate Sinn Féin wants and is ready for. We challenge the logic that the way to create jobs is to cut taxes. Any investment creates jobs. Investment in the real economy creates sustainable jobs. The Minister estimates that a fiscal giveaway of €1.2 billion to €1.5 billion for four years would create 20,000 jobs. This is between €4.8 billion and €6 billion in total. These must be some of the highest paid jobs in the world. It would be far better to invest in creating high quality jobs in the real economy.

We heard today that the marginal tax rate must come down to attract our young emigrants back home. Is this a joke? Does the Government think that 80,000 people are leaving this State every year because the marginal tax rate was too high? Is this what the trauma of emigration has been reduced to? What we have heard today is tax-cutting McCreevy-style, but with less logic and delivered in a Limerick accent. It is a reckless hollowing of our tax base just as we begin to grow. It is a poke in the eye for anybody who believes in a strong, sustainable economic model based on more than certain industries doing well.

Fine Gael and Labour are Fianna Fáil in reverse. Let me explain that. First, they gave us austerity which damaged the economy, kicking it when it was down. Then they stoked up property prices in Dublin and other parts of the country, and now they have moved on to dangling tax cuts.

That is exactly what Fianna Fáil did but just in reverse. It is an attempt to bribe the people with their own money but it repeats all of the stupid mistakes of the previous Government.

Let us be clear. We need better schools, better roads, more affordable homes and affordable child care. We need to invest in the economy so that our children have a better future than we did. That is Sinn Féin's pledge. Instead, we are promised tax cuts and if we are to base them on budget 2015, as the Minister said, we know that they will benefit the better off. This Government is making the same errors Fianna Fáil made. It is a return to boom and bust but this boom will pass most people by, and tax cuts which mainly benefit the better off will not provide the homes, the schools, the bus services and the child care we need. The Government's tax policy has moved the burden from those who can afford to pay it onto the shoulders of those who cannot afford to pay any more. That is the opposite of what is needed.

The record of this Government shows that its tax cuts always mainly benefit the rich more than anybody else. It is not interested in our children's future. For it, long-term economic management is getting as far as the next election because it will not be around when the next generation is suffering the consequences of its decisions. Now that the public finances show €1.5 billion available for reinvestment it acts like a drunken sailor on leave. It is burning a hole in its pocket, but it belongs to the people of Ireland. It could be used to benefit the whole of society. At least the priority should be to protect the poorest and to ensure that low and middle income earners get something back, but the Government's tax measures will do nothing of the kind. If someone is on €500 a week or €5,000 a week and the marginal rate is cut by 1%, guess who is better off? The Ministers say they are helping the middle earners but the reality is that their policies always end up benefiting the richest the most. If any of that sounds familiar it is because it is familiar. It is the policies of Fianna Fáil dressed up as something different. It is tax cuts for the better off, too little investment and stoking up a property boom that passes most people by, and we know what happens next - a bust. This is the politics of failure. It is boom and bust: the sequel.

However, there is an alternative, and Sinn Féin is the party that wants to lead the entire nation to a better society. Our pledge is to protect the poorest, the most disadvantaged and those whose aim is to get a better life for themselves and their loved ones. These people will never benefit from rising prices in penthouse apartments. We also pledge to use the improvements in Government finances to build for the future, and to build a fair recovery now, but that means investing in our future, not tax cutting our way to another boom and bust as Fine Gael and Labour propose.

There is an alternative to these policies. We have argued that fairness is the key. This is not a fair recovery, as we have seen today. The Government and Fianna Fáil do not believe in fairness. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. They believe in congratulating themselves for failure dressed up as success. People have been sacrificed rather than having made sacrifices but we will put money back into people's pockets the fair way by scrapping water charges, ending the family home tax and removing those on the minimum wage from the universal social charge, USC, tax net.

Politics is about choices. The choice now is whether to invest in public services so that our young people, those with disabilities and others have the same rights as others, our older people have the right to a bed and not a hospital trolley, those on the housing waiting list have a right to a house, and those in mortgage distress have a right to live in their homes. That is the option the Ministers opposite have, or they can choose their option of tax cuts because an election is coming.

Sinn Féin is committed to the former. We are committed to hiring more nurses, more midwives, more resource teachers and more special needs assistants immediately. That is the choice we would make. A fair recovery is possible. We can invest in the future. We can have a fair recovery. We can build an Ireland for all its citizens but, unfortunately, that is not possible under Fine Gael and Labour. They were unfair in the recession and their plan for the recovery is unfair because they do not have it in them. They do not understand the word and the reason I know that is because we, and the Irish people, have lived under four years of their unfairness and austerity.

See this speech in context