Dáil debates

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

Spring Economic Statement (Resumed)

 

12:00 pm

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The spring economic statement was intended to open the next stage of the re-election campaign which has always been the Government's main concern. As the Taoiseach was honest enough to say in the past, its primary purpose was to allow the Government to announce tax cuts and spending increases well beyond anything it could implement during its current term.

After six months of an increasingly desperate attempt to buy its way out of unpopularity, the Government has announced budget plans which have no legal or administrative force. The statement is simply another political stunt. As with so many others, it is fooling no one and it is exposing the core failure of this Government. In fact, it illustrates how detached this Government has become. It does not address the challenges and struggles that families and communities are facing every day. The statement has provided almost no new information. It sets out no new vision. It ignores most problems and is complacent and arrogant. It seeks to rewrite history in a deeply cynical way. It is, in short, a powerful confirmation of a deeply unpopular Government which is addicted to spin and detached from the reality of Irish society.

Every time we have a debate like this, the gap between the Government's rhetoric and the facts of what is happening to people gets ever wider. The speeches we have heard so far have set a new standard for just how out of touch the Government is. As the dust settles on the self-congratulation and the months of media spinning, it is the silence which is most striking. There is silence on inequality, child poverty, waiting lists, class sizes, the spread of drugs, insecure jobs and many other areas where the impact of a deeply unfair and two-tiered recovery are being felt.

After four years in office, this Government still has no core vision for the type of society it feels we can be and the role of Government in supporting it. Time after time it has opted instead for short-term political manoeuvring. It is, after all, a Government which was elected on promises to abandon an inherited economic plan which, as its first decision, it decided to leave in place for three years. The basic strategy has not been to find ways of shaping the recovery, but to find ways of claiming credit for it. We now have the bizarre situation where two parties which voted against a range of policies are now delivering speeches claiming credit for them. Both Ministers in their speeches yesterday and in the documents they published sought praise for a whole series of positive developments which had nothing to do with this Government. At one point this was a tactic which was confined to claiming to having delivered the whole fiscal adjustment. This basic dishonesty has now spread into nearly every area and some of it is reaching the level of the bizarre. Initiatives implemented years before 2011 were yesterday suddenly swept up and hailed as the achievement of Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

The Taoiseach will remember that his first speech of the last election was delivered at the launch of a public relations company's report on the levels of trust in Government. He compared Ireland's situation to the siege of Leningrad, promising that he would lift the siege and lead a Government which would re-establish trust with the people. He had a fist pump as well.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.