Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

The Taoiseach and Minister for Finance, in building up as a major event today's presentation of the Department of Finance Exchequer figures, are playing for time on the economy. It is not a unique event. The Department of Finance produces Exchequer figures every month and they have shown, since the beginning of the year, a deterioration in tax receipts. Talk of corrective action and mini budgets and the proposed press conference today is just masking the inactivity that has taken place. Senators O'Toole and Fitzgerald mentioned the economy. The Taoiseach refuses to diagnose and admit what has gone wrong. The economy was based on a property bubble. In 2005 the IMF warned that this bubble was unsustainable.