Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is the "concrete" weather that Irish people live in; two million people unfairly treated in the so-called outcome of the collapse. Do not talk about recovery; it is an outcome at the moment. It is recovery for those few who own the capital and the wealth - the 6% to 8% growth, steady for the last 25 years. Those guys over there in numbers are afraid to write an assessment invoice to the multinational corporations to cough up. Forget 12.5% - say even an 8% effective rate of tax. The Government has not got the guts to send out the invoice. They would pay it. I have done the research. They would not even blink. That is the truth of it.

Like the weather and climate change, which the Bill is all about, they are even getting to that point now. When they had their last conversations, these people, the OECD and so on, said, "We have got to recognise realities and it will be happening anyway." In the meantime the open goal was missed. There was a national recovery opportunity to say to the multinational corporations, "Our people are hurting".

It is all because boards of banks created a credit pyramid, bringing us back to where we started in this conversation. Nobody else did. It was not the developers, by the way. The papers have got all that wrong. The balance sheets prove where the problem was - it was credit. The proof is that the banks are, by their own admission, correcting their balance sheets to the proper loan to deposit ratios. That means they must have made a mistake, and as they say, they are correcting it. If they made the mistake, why are the people paying for it with the second split mortgages?

I have taken a little liberty, but these things are all connected. If the Minister of State does not see that they are connected, then we are missing it. We are being juvenile about things. We have got to get honest. These are the things that should be discussed in Cabinet. These are the big picture responsibilities, not the little selfish things about how to get in and whether we have a good representation and saying, "A few more roads down in Cork to Limerick - that should do it" for this constituency and that. That is not the way to think.

Anyway, I am glad I came in. I heard very relevant and valuable contributions. If the Government is going to go with this Bill, it should at least make it specific and concrete. It should accept the amendments. To leave it woolly and fluffy is pathetic.

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