Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is pretty clear from the contributions that have been made in the House yesterday and today and form some of the media coverage around the spring statement that the Opposition parties plainly do not like it. In fact, it is clear they would rather debate anything else. However, I believe it is not so much its content they dislike as its purpose and what it says about where our country is at.

The spring statement is about economic facts and economic reality. It governs us all. It applies equally to every politician and every party in this House and outside it and it applies to anyone who has an opinion about what the Government should be doing in its budgets for the next few years. The purpose of the spring statement is a basic one. It strips away the final shrouds of secrecy from budget preparation. It sets out the economic and fiscal situation, predicts our fiscal space and then allows for public discussion about our economic priorities. By setting out the facts the spring statement confines us all. It says we can only make proposals to spend the money we expect to have, and so it obliges all of us not only to cost each policy but to make sure that the costs of all these policies do not add up to more than we will have.

The Opposition and, dare I say it, Sinn Féin in particular, hates this because it does not like being kept honest in any way whatsoever. The fact is that Sinn Féin, in particular, is playing recovery deniers. We can see that from the narrative in the past few days. It is doing that because it simply does not suit its pre-election narrative or its agenda to accept that jobs are being created at a quite phenomenal rate and that the taxes paid by good businesses are allowing us now to spend hard-earned cash on improving public services on which we all depend. I would go so far as to say that the Sinn Féin Party has a perverse and twisted vested interest in failure. The fact is that it has no real policies, no real vision for Ireland and no real agenda for a fair and balanced recovery. I often think that they would prefer if this State failed if it bestowed electoral advantage on the party. If we were to take, for example, Deputy Adams's advice proffered to this House and through the media in 2011 - of course, Deputy Adams's is a well known economic illiterate - Ireland would be Greece and we would all be facing much more severe consequences now than we had faced in the past.

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