Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, a former Member of this House. This is a very important debate and one we should have more often. I agree with a number of previous speakers who asked how the situation arose so quickly and how it has come to this stage. I do not think any Minister or Minister of State, or the Taoiseach, who was Minister for Finance for a number of years, has given any explanation to the Irish people as to how there has been such a turn-around in the past 12 months. The Irish people are owed an explanation as to why things have gone so wrong. Why have we become an inefficient nation? Why have we no manufacturing industry? Why have our finances gone from a surplus of €4 billion more than 12 months ago to a deficit of €6 billion or €7 billion and we have added €14 billion to the national debt? These are huge figures and it is a huge turn-around in an economy that was going so well.

The Government is not telling the people what has happened because in doing so it would highlight how it has performed over the past seven or eight years. It took over an economy that was in a great state, with 1,000 jobs a week being created and, for the first time in many years, there was a surplus.

This Government has squandered money at an unbelievable rate. I refer to the Bertie bowl, PPARs, e-voting machines and a whole host of other areas where money was squandered. We need only look at where things started to go wrong with regard to the housing boom. Mortgages of 100% and 120% were granted, which is unbelievable. People borrowed more than the price of the house. They borrowed, on the back of the house, for the car and for the fit-out of the house. That was not right and the bankers and the Government that allowed them to do that should pay a price. Everybody on the street knew that mortgages of 120% were unsustainable. Credit cards were topped up. Bankers sent out application forms for people to sign up for credit of €8,000, €10,000 or €20,000 on a credit card. People bought cars on credit cards. It was ridiculous.

More than ten years ago I said in this House that we should not lose our manufacturing industries. We out-priced ourselves and we became uncompetitive. Some people who are still Members of this House said at the time that we did not need manufacturing jobs but rather high class, added value jobs. If there is a manufacturing sector, there will be a certain number of high value and added value jobs. However, Ireland has no oil. It has gas that it is not being paid for, no manufacturing industry and outsourced cottage industries. Ireland is at a crossroads and the Government must put the cards on the table. The people need to know what action the Government will take.

Fine Gael's position on postponing the public service pay increases has been rubbished by the Government. It has turned this around by claiming we are against the public service, which we are not. There are great people working in the public service, many of them the brightest, but in many cases they are not motivated. One only has to look at the Health Service Executive or a local authority to see the majority working in those services are not motivated. Benchmarking should have been the tool to motivate them. However, it was used to drive a wedge between top management and the ordinary workers in the HSE, local authorities and the Civil Service. The top people got everything while those at the bottom were left behind. Intelligent people were left unmotivated and will not be motivated for the foreseeable future. The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, claimed 12,500 teachers are not at work every Monday and Friday. This is simply not true. I do not know where he is coming from on this. He had to withdraw his remarks but he should apologise for them too.

It is no wonder that what has happened over recent years has brought us to the current position. Compare Ireland's economic position to that of Spain and Portugal. Some years ago their economies were worse than Ireland's. Now, they have passed us out. Their economies are better-off and better able to take on the world economic downturn. They have tourism to offer, for example, with wine and other products produced in their own countries which they can sell much more cheaply. Can the Minister name anything in this country that one can get value for money in? Even the water in this country is expensive, probably the most expensive in the world.

One does not have to be an economist to know that our economy is not good. An ordinary Joe Soap like me can see the larger picture — no manufacturing industry, inefficiencies, no oil but gas for which we are not getting paid. County Mayo has not benefitted from the Celtic tiger. Only ten jobs were created in the past ten years by the IDA. The county received little in the improvements to the roads and rail infrastructure. Many other counties benefitted from extra rail services when Mayo did not.

When the Green Party joined forces with Fianna Fáil, I believed there was a window of opportunity for green issues to come to the fore. Some Fianna Fáil Senators said they were delighted to join forces with the Green Party because they felt it would pull them in a certain direction. Bicycles and bulbs seem to be the only initiatives from the Green Party when many hoped that new, green technologies could be initiated. Ireland could be a world leader in some areas of green technology if we applied ourselves to it. There should be some incentives for such projects but they are not forthcoming from the Government.