Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, for sharing time. I welcome the budget announced by the Government yesterday. I will pick up on two statements in yesterday's budget in the time I have.

The first comment was made by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, when he talked about our budget commitment to our strategy being a bridge to a better future. Of course he is absolutely right. This is bridging finance, and we must remember that.

These are not permanent changes in how we budget or spend as a country. Borrowing costs are low at the moment and so we can borrow. We can afford to do that now to manage what we hope is a temporary disruption to our livelihoods, society and economy, and to help as many people as possible through these very dark and difficult times.

However, we as the decision-makers also need to ask ourselves what we will do if these disruptions are not temporary. The second important thing that was said yesterday came from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, when he said that the resources available to us are not limitless. They are not. We will spend €20 billion more both this year and next year than we will take in, and those are just the current estimates if nothing else goes wrong or changes. In this budget, we decided to add €35 billion to the stock of national debt between this year and next year. That is the right thing to do because we can afford to do it now but it is also worth noting that before we came into this year the stock of national debt was already €204 billion. If we add €35 billion it becomes €239 billion. That is not a small increase. It is also worth noting, and I make this comparison on purpose, that in November 2010 the amount of money we had invested in Anglo Irish Bank and the Irish Nationwide Building Society, INBS, was €34.7 billion. We know some of the consequences of the decisions that were made at that time.

To reiterate, I welcome what we are doing and Ministers are making the right choices. I just wish to sound a note of caution when I hear Sinn Féin and others say we should be borrowing and putting even more debt onto the taxpayers of the future. Covid may not be temporary. A vaccine may not be around the corner. The V-shaped recovery may turn out to be false and borrowing costs may not stay low. Every new day under restrictions, this economic situation becomes more precarious for all of us and more permanent damage to our economy is done. I am not being heartless about Covid or the difficult times people are going through, and I am not dismissing the very real needs of people today, but we must think about the non-Covid health damage being done in our society and the damage being done to jobs in our economy. If that damage lasts a very long time, it could perversely undermine all our efforts today to help people through Covid, as well as the social welfare benefits we have in place, other healthcare responses and all the other things we try to do every day to make people's lives better.

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