Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is a good and prescient question, to which there are two components. First, it is incumbent on any Government to live within the Stability and Growth Pact, the legal binding agreement to which the State has signed up and for which the people of Ireland have voted. There are choices within this to examine the fiscal space available in the next few years and to decide on how it should be deployed. That debate will be held during the general election campaign and each party, including each party in government, will have a different view on it. From my perspective, I wish to devote the bulk of the fiscal space available in the next five years to improving public services because despite the interactions I have in this Chamber, there are pressure points that must be addressed, as well as new services the Government would like to add. For example, it started to so do in the area of child care in the last budget, while in the budget before that the Government focused on housing, but it has a lot more to do and this debate must take place during the course of the general election campaign. However, it must all be couched in terms that will ensure the recovery is not put in jeopardy. This imperative becomes all the more real when one considers what is happening economically in the international environment, including China and elsewhere.

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