Results 4,181-4,200 of 32,583 for speaker:Richard Bruton

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: Is the Ceann Comhairle adding the five minutes that the Minister, Deputy O'Dea, has already taken from my time?

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: This country needs a serious medium-term strategy to address what is happening in the real world.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: The Minister, Deputy O'Dea, may be living in his own little world.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: In the real world people are losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet. They are facing negative equity and are unable to repay their mortgages. Parents of children with disabilities are being told by agencies that there is no service for them. That is the reality we have to face. We need and deserve a serious strategy from the Government that addresses the required changes....

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: Where is the thrust among public and private agencies to compete for the delivery of public services so we will see a genuine attempt to deliver best practice? There are no such initiatives.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: Where is the strategy to prioritise capital spending and recognise the problems with broadband, port infrastructure and electricity infrastructure? There is no such strategy.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: Instead we are seeing cutbacks in capital spending. Where is the strategy for rationalising agencies?

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: It is not there. It is a wing, a hope and a prayer.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: Where is the thrust for accountability with consequences, starting with Ministers? It is not there.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: The Minister for Finance who created this situation has jumped away from it and is pretending that he has no responsibility.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: Instead we have seen a huge number of reviews. There will be a review of agencies, while examining this and assessing that. They are going to set up a task force on the public service. There is going to be an outgrowth of assessments, evaluations, examinations and consultants but there will be no results. The Taoiseach was managing the public service for four years and came into...

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: What is most disturbing about this week's announcement is that the triumvirate, the three Ministers in charge of the economy, do not realise what is going on in the real world. They have now woken up to the need for Ireland to articulate a new strategy, taking it in a different direction, that will reinvent the economy. In addition, it would reform public services, tackle inflationary...

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: There is no realisation of those needs. There has been no mention this week of what the Government might do to resolve the credit crunch that has people up to their necks in debt. Banks are pulling back on every front, while ordinary businesses struggle to get capital to remain in place. People who want to buy houses are unable to obtain mortgages.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: The Government is silent on those issues, including a competitiveness action plan and an anti-inflation strategy. They have no commitment to change, including competition and deregulation, anywhere in the public sector. That is the core problem: they continue to peddle the snake oil of a programme for Government issued last year, from which €40 billion in cumulative tax expectations have...

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: We must seek far greater efficiencies within the public sector. We must start a serious review of every programme, not just those on which money has not yet been spent.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: There must be a certain irony in Deputy O'Dea lecturing the Opposition on interruption. He has not interrupted just once; he has interrupted a million times.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: It has become a Fianna Fáil strategy in the media not to allow anybody speak and just to fill the gaps with waffle. With the Ceann Comhairle to protect us in this House, I would have thought we would have some sort of decorum.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: I can understand why the Ceann Comhairle is happy to be out of the Cabinet, if he had to put up with that all day. One of the things we are supposed to be debating today is the national development plan. According to Fianna Fáil, this was the centre piece their strategy.

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: This was going to deliver the economic nirvana towards which we were heading. I am sure the Minister has the progress report for 2007 for his bed time reading, as it contains some very worthwhile things. The programme was to be delivered in full, on budget and on time. This was the great mantra that was repeated time and again on posters, on the back of buses and everywhere else. None of...

National Development Plan: Motion (Resumed) (10 Jul 2008)

Richard Bruton: Perhaps the consequence is the empty Chamber today, as the rest have been banished. Are we meeting our targets at the Department of Defence? The sad truth is that if the NDP was to be the centre piece of the Government's strategy, then it had to do what it said at the outset of the strategy, namely, to manage current spending within the capacity of the economy to deliver. Instead, the...