Liam Fitzgerald (Fianna Fail)

Given his track record, it is surprising to hear Senator Quinn sounding many negative notes, on which I will comment in a few minutes. I welcome the fact that the Minister for Finance was here today and introduced these statements on the Estimates. I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy de Valera. It was remiss of me during a previous Adjournment debate when I was in a hurry not to refer to the Minister of State's significant political decision and I will take this opportunity to do so. This is all part and parcel of the way Cabinets and Governments do their business in terms of personnel.

I hope I am not embarrassing the Minister of State but I could not let the occasion go without referring to her decision. I hope it is not final but, as it appears to be, I wish to take this opportunity to pay her the warmest possible tribute I can for her contributions to previous Books of Estimates and budgets as an essential, innovative and creative part of Government and her contributions to the policy behind those finances. I wish her the very best for the future. Whatever decision she makes will be a wise one and I hope it gives her the same fulfilment politics did. I have used part of my speaking time and will move on.

One of Senator McDowell's fundamental points was that while the Government, as reflected in budgets and Estimates from 1997 to 2004, had a vision, and the finances of the country are by and large in order, a significant weakness is that the Government does not now seem to have a vision. I could not disagree more. As times change, matters evolve and circumstances develop, visions can and should be refined. They can sometimes divert for various reasons.

With the deepest respect to the Senator, the central vision of the Government is to use the resources, strengths and fruits of successful management of the economy for the benefit of the most vulnerable in our society. In these times, if one were to examine all caring Departments, one of the most fundamental targeted areas reflecting a coherent and consistent vision is that of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. The latter covers a multitude, those who cannot stand up for themselves.

I thank Senator Quinn. The issues he referred to are extremely sensitive and I believe his pessimism about the short-term to long-term potential of the Irish economy in terms of its transition from manufacturing to services and construction is unfounded or not fully justified. The economy has a strong base which it did not have in the past. The type of vagaries and peaks and troughs that the construction industry was subject to in the past will not apply in future. I am not the font of wisdom in respect of supply and demand in the construction sector and building boom. We all accept that there has been an ongoing subliminal possibility of negative equity in the industry but we have the ingredients for a soft landing.

I understand what the Senator is saying in terms of intellectual capital and loopholes. We should proceed cautiously as, despite the write-off of multinationals by others, we have gained substantially from them, not alone in terms of the jobs they created directly but the spin-off indigenous industries that feed on them. Multinationals provide a good base from which we can work.

A political leader who is not a Member of the Oireachtas recently said that one of the biggest objectives is to home in on indigenous industries but no one is doing so. I reject this completely. Whether directly or indirectly, by promoting multinationals we enabled, facilitated and promoted the creation of homegrown industries. We did so through enabling local initiatives to feed on the multinationals and establish their own structures. The basis of this remains. I accept that, as the global economy takes over and multinationals leave our shores for lower cost bases, such as the Far East, we are at risk of indigenous industries contemporaneously dying. Nevertheless, the basis of a renewal of homegrown industries exists and, with all due deference to his managerial and entrepreneurial experience, I would not be as pessimistic as Senator Quinn.

I never have a chance to speak about education. The value of the fruits of any good Government's economic policies is its ability to transfer those fruits. Just as it is transferring them on an ongoing basis to develop the economy, it is transferring them to increase the capacity and potential of the economy to perform better in successive years.

The second core fundamental is the Government's ability to target those resources as they increasingly become available, not only to public services in terms of quantity, quality and infrastructure, but to ensure that the voiceless among us receive the loudest and strongest response.