Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I am pleased to second the motion. I will elaborate on some of the points made by Senator Twomey and respond to the Government's amendment to the motion.

I concur with the analysis offered by Senator Twomey regarding the origins of our economic success. In the past number of years, we have completely opened up our borders, society and economy to the global economy. This opening up process coincided with an economic miracle that was taking place. The entire global economy, primarily led by the United States of America, experienced one of its strongest periods ever, with global economic growth, low inflation, low unemployment and rising productivity. During that period, Ireland was in a very good position and was able to ride the crest of a wave. The opening up of our borders and society, to coincide with this global phenomenon, ensured we benefitted from it and our economy grew.

During that time, however, we should have ensured that when the favourable economic environment changed, we would be still in a good position. We would then be able to ride the crest of less fortunate waves and ensure our society and workers would be protected against a slowing down of the global economic growth we have enjoyed. That this did not occur is why Fine Gael tabled this motion this evening.

If one looks at the United States of America and the United Kingdom, neither economy is technically in recession. Both economies are experiencing an economic slowdown but their Governments are working to correct this and to re-stimulate their economies. In Ireland however, we are already making cutbacks, even though we are only at the beginning of a change in the economic environment. We can see the first signs of change and potentially stormy weather in the global environment and already we are making cutbacks in HSE expenditure, summer works schemes, school building programmes and so forth. This is happening because the Government completely failed to lay the foundations for future growth. It failed to ensure that when things were not going so well in the wider world, we would be in a position to protect our economy and those working in it.

I wish to focus on public sector reform and the position of our education system, particularly with reference to lifelong learning and the need to upskill our workforce. On the latter point, I have heard much discussion in recent months on the need to upskill workers in our economy. FÁS published a report in 2007 on the skills status of our workforce. The centrepiece of that report was the fact that between 500,000 and 700,000 people's skills would have to be completely upgraded in order to ensure they would be able to gain employment, become prosperous and contribute to the economy. It is almost a badge of pride for the Government that it managed to identify that such a large group of people needs retraining. However, it should have asked some years ago what it should do to ensure such people did not actually exist, that there were not hundreds of thousands of people within our economy in need of urgent retraining and upskilling. Now that the economic outlook has deteriorated, that enormous amount of work must be done.

That such retraining and upskilling has not taken place represents a lamentable failure on the part of the Government. The reasons for the need for such upskilling are several. In the past few years, many people entered the workforce who had not completed second level education. The last OECD report showed that 38% of our workforce did not have secondary education. To find ourselves, at the end of a period when there was enormous growth in Exchequer funds, coupled with an enormous increase in funding for education, in a position where four out of ten workers do not have a leaving certificate, is a disgrace. The Government and the economy will have to deal with the consequences of that in the coming years.

When one examines the other economies which are well set up to deal with the global economic downturn, one of the things they have in common is the fact that, for at least the last decade, they have invested in preschool education. Thus, when their students exit the education system, their minds will have been influenced at the earliest possible stage, ensuring they have the capacity to learn more skills and languages and be able to adapt to a very rigorous and demanding competitive environment. The fact that, after ten years of a Fianna Fáil led Government and many years of the Celtic tiger, we do not have a preschool system in place to ensure our workforce is equipped to deal with the challenges of a rapidly changing, competitive economic environment, is entirely the fault of the Government.

The issue of public service reform is mentioned in the amendment. Every time we get into a discussion such as this, there is a significant debate on the additional amounts being spent or people being employed. However, we must consider what we are getting in return. The Minister for Finance has made two efforts in this respect, both of which ended in complete failure. The expenditure review initiative scheme was announced in 2002-03 and considered large areas of capital and current expenditure to determine what value for money and outputs were being delivered, but none of the reports from the scheme have been published. The scheme's replacement programme, the value for money scheme, produced 93 reports seeking to identify how millions of euro of taxpayers' money was being spent and what was being achieved in return. Some 66 of the reports were due to be published by the end of 2007, of which only one third has been published.

Given that we will ask people working in the private sector and the non-sheltered economy to work harder and to make better decisions on how to spend their money, the Government's singular failure to publish the reports, to follow through on any of the expenditure review initiatives it has discussed or to ensure that value for money and outputs are being delivered is a legacy, the consequences of which will become apparent in coming years. For this reason, the motion we are proposing is timely. If many of the amendment's provisions had been carried out in the past decade, we would be better placed to deal with the challenges of a more threatening global environment.