Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Haughey, and his officials to the House.

This is an important debate. Our job must be to get the economy moving and working for the people. I feel a great sense of powerlessness, however. No matter what I say, it makes no difference. The economy is in free-fall and nothing serious is being done to intervene. The public, too, has lost faith. When I informed people I would be contributing to the Finance Bill debate, they told me to tell the Ministers to make up their minds and present a plan that will work. Over the years Deputy Cowen always postponed decisions. He is always one report away from important decisions. The most recent example is "an bord snip", another high level group being put together to make decisions that should be made by the Cabinet.

The experience of this Government has been largely in good times. It was easy to spend money when it was available. Now the Government is being challenged and its competencies are being tested. I ask the Minister to show bravery and neck for the people because this will not go away by itself. Decisions are needed.

When will the Government recapitalise the banks to provide credit to the many perfectly fine businesses in danger of going to the wall? A month ago, the Galway Chamber of Commerce said to me that the question was how many businesses would make it to Christmas. The question in January will be how many will make it to February. Why is the Government not providing the necessary credit lines for those good businesses so that they can pay wages? Otherwise they will have to let their employees go. The businesses will keep going but with fewer employees.

We must look at being responsible and suspending the pay deal. We must examine introducing a redundancy scheme to get rid of waste in the Health Service Executive. When the health boards were merged into the HSE, people found themselves at middle management level without job descriptions. They are still there. Let us make decisions and provide a way out for these people. Let us cut the waste.

We must reverse the increase in VAT. We must stop our consumers voting with their feet and shopping the North because of the attractive VAT rate. We should watch the trends in the economy. The people are telling us how they feel when we see these patterns.

I recommend that the Minister provide PRSI relief for employers taking on new workers in 2009. Employers are our income generators and the Minister should not tax them but incentivise them.