John Dardis (Progressive Democrats)

The challenge now for the Government is to protect the progress that has been made and to ensure the public finances do not slip back into the mire of the mid-1980s. The challenge is to ensure that we never again return to the scourge of mass unemployment, emigration and the prospect of the International Monetary Fund taking over the management of the economy.

The best way to meet that challenge is to ensure prudent management of the public finances. The Government could have taken the soft option in the book of Estimates and Government parties could have ignored the problems on the international front. The way some people are talking, one would think that 11 September, BSE, foot and mouth and the slow down in the international economy did not happen. They are realities and we must deal with them.

The Government could have ignored the slow down in tax revenue and could have courted cheap popularity by letting public spending run way ahead of our economic growth, growth that is still good by international standards.