Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The stability programme update, SPU, document tells a positive story of remarkable change and of challenge which has yet to be overcome. In April 2011, shortly after the Labour Party entered government, that year's SPU told a grim story. It spoke of a critical need to try to get the public finances into some kind of order, of ensuring the sustainability of the Government's debt position, of hauling the banking sector back to health, of getting people back to work, of saving public servants from the type of redundancies they faced in other countries, which had seen the collapse of their banking systems, of the unparalleled collapse we had in the housing market and of the 330,000 people who lost their jobs. This was Fianna Fáil's equality and progressiveness, as all those who lost their jobs saw their income decrease. The income distribution among the people of the country became progressive because everybody's income was lower. People need to be careful and think it through when they speak about what is progressive and what is regressive.

As grim as the forecasts were then, they proved to be overly optimistic, forecasting that unemployment would peak at about 14.5% when in fact it went above 15%. Similarly, the SPU in 2011 predicted overall Government debt would peak at 118%; it eventually hit 120%. In truth - and we must consider this honestly - the scale and depth of Ireland's crisis was worse than anybody could have accurately foreseen, yet we see just five years on, as the Government prepares to leave office, that the situation has been utterly transformed. The SPU shows that in 2015, the economy grew by 7.8%, the strongest performance in Europe by a very wide margin and well ahead of expectations. The number of people at work rose by more than 50,000. Shortly we will have 2 million people back at work. Unemployment has fallen below 9% for the first time since December 2008. Many people in this Chamber think unemployment does not matter at all, but it does matter. Many people trade in suggestions that unemployment is of no concern, but it is of huge concern to the families, individuals and communities affected by it.

In 2015 and in each of the previous four years Ireland more than achieved its targets for the public finances. We have comfortably come below our debt and deficit reduction targets. With a headline deficit of 2.3% of GDP and an underlying deficit of 1.3%, we are comfortably below the 3% reference rate for an excessive deficit under the fiscal treaty. Therefore, for the first time since 2009, Ireland will be outside the excessive deficit procedure. The debt-to-GDP ratio fell to 93.8%, close to the European average, and is on a strong downward trajectory. Effectively, therefore, the 2016 SPU set out in unambiguous terms the rescue of the Irish economy and our public finances from a state close to bankruptcy five years ago, the very strong performance over the last 12 months and the transformation in the prospects of the country over the next five to 10 years.

None of this is to say that everything is rosy because it is not. Behind every new job is a person or a family benefiting from recovery in their own lives, but not everyone who wants a job has got a job yet. Unemployment has fallen significantly but has not fallen far enough, and the point of recovery for many individuals, families and communities is to see people back in the town, village, suburb or city, working and having financial independence, and working in jobs with good pay and conditions. I agree with what Deputy Calleary said about apprenticeship. It is one of the things I have spent a lot of time building into the social welfare structure. Starter apprenticeships and first steps onto the road of a job for some of our young people who, unfortunately, do not have the contacts - a dad, uncle or other relative - who can, as with the apprenticeships of old, walk them down to a workplace where they will get an apprenticeship. Apprenticeship, like everything else, has changed very significantly.

The housing crisis will take time to work out but, in the meantime, thousands of families need practical, affordable interim solutions. The number of mortgage arrears, as was acknowledged earlier, has been steadily falling but that is no consolation to those families who remain in arrears and need more help. While great strides have been made in expanding the network of primary care centres, the health system as a whole, as we all know, remains under severe pressure. I am acutely conscious that on all these fronts and more the effects of the crisis are still being felt and that many people are still struggling to see recovery in their own lives and to see the hope that their children will get on a career path, whether that be college, an apprenticeship or whatever it is that the children want to do.

What the 2016 SPU presents is the opportunity to build on the progress made to date, put sustainable solutions in place and help people to get to a better place in their lives. The outlook for the economy has improved since budget day and the public finances are again projected to beat targets, but we do have very significant issues in Ireland, the European Union and the globalised economy. We now live in a globalised economic space. One of the reasons that Ireland has done well is that foreign direct investment never faltered during the most difficult years because it was not financed out of local banks in the Irish economy.

However, we have seen, for instance, the revelations in recent weeks contained in the Panama papers of two distinct but related problems: a global web of interlinked legal and financial firms that facilitate illegality, which is a matter for the relevant policing authorities to pursue; and the support by this web of interconnected services of legal but morally dubious tax planning that allows firms and wealthy individuals to minimise their tax liabilities at the expense of national exchequers and citizens. Much of this aggressive tax planning is carried out in secret behind the shield of the kind of paper companies identified in the Panama papers leaks. Such tax planning is an international issue that requires a co-ordinated international response because, through such a response, all national exchequers would benefit. I persuaded Deputy Calleary's late colleague, the former Minister, Brian Lenihan Jnr., to introduce minimum effective income tax rates. As I have said before, we do not yet have the same regime in effect for corporates so we need to ensure that tax avoidance by very wealthy individuals and firms is both mitigated and minimised. There has been a lot of talk this morning of fairness, but the core of fairness in a democratic system is that people contribute in a fair way their share of tax, no more and no less, and every citizen should pay his or her fair share of tax. Ensuring such an outcome would boost our tax revenues even further in the years ahead.

We have as well within the SPU the prospect of a significant surplus over the next five years. These are very strong figures, but the opportunities they offer have to be realised. We must recognise that the projections in the SPU and the additional resources are contingent on the growth assumptions underlying them. Therefore, given the risks the Irish economy faces, these assumptions cannot be taken for granted. If the recovery falters, there will be a corresponding reduction in the resources available. One very significant risk that we have already discussed this week is the prospect of Brexit, which, if it were to materialise, would likely be very damaging to our economy.

Another risk is instability at home. While our ability to influence external risks is limited, to say the least, we have the power to mitigate the risk of political instability. It is therefore imperative that a new Government is put in place as soon as possible to guard against the risks on the horizon and, I hope, maximise the opportunity ahead of us as a country.

See this speech in context