Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I warmly welcome the Minister and his officials. It may well be the case that Germany and France need new economic departures. What is required in Ireland is a steady hand on the tiller, which the Minister is providing, allowing us to continue the country's fantastic progress in recent years. The debt to GDP ratio continues to decline. The Minister mentioned employment having increased since 1997 by 500,000, but I believe that by 2007 employment will have increased by 1 million, double the 1987 level. That will also be an enormous achievement. In that context the fact that according to the Estimates, €42 billion will be able to be spent on services, which does not provide the full picture since the budget is to follow, is very impressive by any standards. There is no sign or talk of cutbacks.

Of course, the Minister must operate within a safety margin, and it is very important that he do so. Without such a margin, if there were a sudden deterioration in circumstances, one could find oneself surprisingly quickly knocking up against the 3% EMU limit. Many other EU economies have got into difficulty on that account. One can open one's newspaper any day of the week and see that we are under constant competitive pressures from various sources. Perhaps I might mention two or three that have arisen recently. Our sugar industry is under pressure in Brussels. There is the problem of the Irish Ferries dispute and the displacement of employment. The US is also scrutinising transfer pricing by US multinationals. The net point is that we must stay on our toes.

I warmly welcome the extra spending on education and the details given by the Minister on extra teachers. If he has any spare room in his budget, school buildings are a particularly worthy form of investment. I attended the opening of a Gaelscoil in Tipperary earlier this week, and the quality was fantastic. There is money in the Estimates for infrastructure, and I imagine that there will be some more in the budget itself. That underpins the Transport 21 plan. To provide some perspective from outside the jurisdiction, I will quote from the Belfast Telegraph. An article on the business pages of 21 November by Carlton Baxter complains that there is no real debate on the Northern budget and about the dominance of the public service sector. He writes:

That can't be a healthy situation at a time when our neighbours in the Republic are investing heavily in everything under the sun, especially their infrastructure. Their economy just keeps on growing.

How ironic that at a time when the Dáil is investing in motorways we have a draft budget that cuts the amount of money needed to repair and maintain our roads.

Every year that passes, new projects come on stream. Criticism is made of the fact that a quick expansion in the late 1990s caused some inflationary problems. It was a new problem for us to cope with. However, no planning whatsoever was carried out by the rainbow coalition on infrastructure. One searches their election documents in vain for any serious reference.

With regard to justice, it is clear that we are moving towards the target of 14,000 gardaí.