John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to be able to contribute to this debate. I was Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in the last Dáil for four years. As the Members opposite will know the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, visited the committee on many occasions and we were very grateful for its presence. I was very taken by the message IFAC's representatives delivered this morning. It may have surprised some people as it did not necessarily conform with the messages that IFAC would be associated with. As a previous chair of IFAC has said, one of the purposes for which the council was established in first place was "[...] to institutionalise the memory of the crash" so that we would not make the same mistakes. Part of the memory which has certainly been institutionalised within the memory and consciousness of Irish people was the pain and suffering that was endured during the crash. People suffered economic loss and mental and psychological pain as a result of it. The opportunity that has existed in previous times for people to leave our shores is obviously not there now. As such IFAC's message this morning was in essence that this is not the time to be penny-pinching. In fact its central message was that this is the time to carry the workforce and those who need it most through this tortuous, tedious time.

I am mindful of the fact that there is a considerable section of the country and society which has escaped pretty much unscathed in financial and economic terms, albeit that they may in some cases have contracted the virus and would have suffered equally to everybody else. There are those, however, who are in the employ of companies which have escaped virtually unscathed, in different sectors of the economy. When we see those who have remained reasonably comfortable during this phase and we consider the five or six wealthiest companies in the world, it is time to have a conversation about what role those companies can play in the economic welfare and the welfare of the community in general.

I was formerly spokesperson on Dublin for my party and Dublin is very nervous today. The Ceann Comhairle will appreciate this as his constituency went through three lockdowns in total, one of which was a repeated lockdown. It would help if the heaving of sighs from the Opposition side of the House could be a bit quieter. I remind Deputies that at the time of the crash-----

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