Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute on this issue.

I am very conscious that I am one of the very few that have had the opportunity to do this. I want to express our thanks as a party to all people on the front line, not just in the health service but those manning supermarkets, filling stations, doing deliveries, manufacturing and so on. It is to their eternal credit and we appreciate their efforts.

Will the Minister tell us what is the situation in Europe? Have there been discussions on a mechanism to be adopted to shelve, park, warehouse, whatever terminology she wishes to use, the entire cost of this process? It will run to many hundreds of billions of euro internationally and in Ireland it will be in the tens of billions of euro. It is essential that a mechanism needs to be identified, whatever it is. This country cannot look ahead to another lost decade of austerity to underpin measures that will need to be taken to underpin our economy. Where are we in terms of agreement in the European context? Where are the Germans and Dutch, in particular, on agreeing a mechanism? We are going to have to embrace mechanisms similar to the Marshall Plan in 1948 and indeed the London agreements of the 1950s in terms of write-downs of debt and considerations in that regard if, either the present outgoing Government or any new Government that may be formed, is going to take the sorts of measures that will support people, business and employment, and to look after the social supports that we will need to continue for those unable to look after themselves, because we will not be able to do it if we are looking at austerity as the only way of achieving it.

I am choosing to use my time to pool several questions and then the Minister can respond rather than going in and out, which will just waste time. We will have to consider the sunken costs that all businesses are facing at the moment, be they utilities, insurance, security, IT or others. In order to stand still there are substantial costs. Those costs will have to be dealt with by way of direct grant aid. We cannot strangle the business community with debt that it cannot manage and feel we have dealt with it. There will have to be an element of helicopter money, direct grant aid or free money, whatever the Minister likes to call it.

See this speech in context