Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with much of what has been said. We agree with this and want to make sure we are part of the IMF's loan infrastructure. We are a long way from the original concepts in Bretton Woods. We have moved into a period of free flow of capital where private enterprise takes precedence over everything, including the necessity of our communities and societies. That needs to be looked at.

It is difficult to talk about the IMF without talking about our past experience with it, which was one of austerity. It embedded inequality and poverty. We all get or should get the basic concept that more equal societies work better, are healthier and do better on every key performance indicator, KPI.

As Deputy Andrews said, a huge amount of work has been carried out by the IMF research facility, including papers on neoliberalism oversold and research into wealth taxes and how they work and into the necessity for a more fitting and better system that works for the entirety of our society. The difficulty has been that the IMF has come in with sets of conditions which have been about privatisation, impacting on workers' rights and austerity. A lesson learned across the European Union was that austerity did not work. During the pandemic, mistakes may have been made but the general idea was that we cannot return to the road of austerity. The thinking was more akin to the US New Deal and the Marshall plan funding of Europe after the Second World War. That is where we have to stay.

It was necessary for the State to do the heavy lifting in the pandemic and is necessary for states across Europe to do the heavy lifting in the humanitarian crisis caused by the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin. If we are to deal with climate change and other issues, we will have to lift fiscal constraints and be imaginative on an EU level. We saw that imagination during the pandemic when we were able to do all those things we possibly could not do.

We need to get real with the issues we have. We will have 20,000, 40,000, possibly 100,000 or even 200,000 Ukrainians here. It is necessary that we play our part but we all know the housing crisis we have. We are in a different situation and need to show the imagination that elements of even the British Government was able to show post Second World War with the idea of the welfare state. We have to engage in a system of building houses.

I accept what the Government has said in the sense that our solutions will not be perfect. That is fine but we need imaginative solutions. We have to be able to fund that and there has to be a conversation across Europe, not just about loosening fiscal constraints but about ensuring there is free flow of capital, particularly for necessary capital infrastructure to deliver for Ukrainians fleeing war and for our people who are suffering from our inability to facilitate them with housing. If we are to deal with the big issues of tomorrow, we have to do things differently. We support this but we hope the IMF has learned from past mistakes.

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