Shane Ross (Independent)

I support the comments of Senator Coghlan and Senator Fitzgerald about "an bord snip nua". The mind boggles. Why on earth do we need four people who, I suspect, are not quite as eminent as everyone describes them, to recommend to the Government where the cuts should be made? Senator Fitzgerald put her finger on the button. This economy is in crisis and if the Government refers the crisis to a committee, the crisis will not be resolved. It is a committee of four people. I would like to know how and why they were chosen. They are all public servants. I cannot understand the point of putting four people who are all on the public payroll on a board to decide on an issue such as this. It seems a very strange choice.

We are in a crisis. I heard the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, speak on the radio this morning, and various other people, and it appears Senator O'Toole was right yesterday when he said there is no plan. These guys do not know what is going on and the problem is not the crisis we are in but that the Government has no plan at all to deal with it, which is serious. It is not our job to support Government policy but I have for years supported its policy on the economy and I am completely and utterly disillusioned with the fact that the Government parties can run an economy when it is going well but when it comes to a crisis, they are like a bunch of amateurs. Nothing has come from them to indicate they have a plan or they are in control.

The other issue regarding "an bord snip nua" is it will not make recommendations for approximately a year. The Leader can correct me if I am wrong. The economy is moving downhill so quickly that the recommendations the board makes in a year will need to have been implemented this year and they will be out of date by then. When the Minister for Finance comes to the House on Friday, he needs to outline where he will make the cuts. I suspect the Government parties may have more sympathy from the Opposition than normally would be the case in the political atmosphere in which battles are fought in the House because everyone is aware of the need for cuts. However, if they put the recommendations off for a year or 18 months, they will then be debated but we will be two and a half or three years into the electoral cycle and there is no way the Government will make cuts in public services or expenditure with a year or 18 months to go to a general election. The Government has funked the issue of cuts in public expenditure by giving the job to this body, which is, by definition, antagonistic to such cuts because of where its members come from.