Dan Boyle (Green Party)

We live in unprecedented times. There has been a downward trend nationally and internationally in key economic indicators unparalleled in economic history. How we deal with it is a challenge for our generation. In Ireland we are feeling it more markedly than most because it has come on the back of the longest sustained period of economic development in the country's history.

There is a need to examine critically and appraise how we got to where we now are. The main priority is to decide what can be put in place to achieve stability and sustainability in our society and economy. There is no doubt the Celtic tiger years brought about a degree of superficiality that gave us some false comfort of the actual wealth of the country. I would like to see a movement towards a more sustainable society and economy and a questioning of the value of real wealth.

The Government publication, which has been treated quite cynically by some sources, is an honest attempt to point a way forward, identify action areas and inject an element of specificity on where we need to get to from here. As a society, we need to have a debate on the fact that while there was a growth in confidence and development in entrepreneurial abilities during the Celtic tiger years which had not existed in the State to the same extent previously, negative factors also developed, such as the growth of individualism and the leakage between community and commercial interests. I, and my party, believe that we need to establish a more sustainable society by returning to a debate on values. The news today indicates that one of the factors of the Celtic tiger years was a diminution of many of those values. The increase in greed and individualism are some of the factors which have brought us to where we are today. I sense the Minister is facing those problems, in addition to the direct day-to-day difficulties to which the Government and political system must respond.

We are in a situation where the State has already made policy decisions and indicated that key resources will be made available to sustain the economy into the future. We need to ask who works with the State. I have stated on the record that many of those running our financial institutions are not and cannot be those who work with the State on where we go from here. It is a violent word but there should be a cull of executives in the banking system. Public confidence is needed from now on, and it does not and cannot exist with many of the people running our key institutions. Yesterday's resignation is the start of a process, and many people involved in financial institutions need to look to themselves to right the wrong.

We have insufficient regulation. This is not necessarily a flaw of Government policy. The legislation that exists was predicated on existing international regulatory practices which were flawed. They were flawed in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and especially in this country. The laws need to be reviewed and strengthened and as part of the public confidence process, the people doing the regulations need to be critically examined and, if necessary, changed. My personal opinion on that has not changed. Today's news means whatever oversight that has existed has not been to the degree we expect from a regulatory body.

I disagree with Senator O'Toole on some of the powers the Financial Regulator does not have directly but should have been able to apply through a moral authority. The regulator has supervisory and prudential powers but also consumer interest powers. When products such as 110% mortgages were made available, the only person I heard speaking about it was a Minister of State with responsibility for housing. I heard no one in the financial services industry or the Financial Regulator say this was a poor product and would be dangerous for people who used it. That is the ultimate failure of regulation, not only omitting to say whether a product should exist but also not warning the public on the danger of its existence.

I see the Finance Bill as the brighter side of the coin of the budget for 2009. Many difficult decisions were made on 14 October, many of which had to be reassessed in light of justified public concern. The nature of decisions made on budget day are part of a process. If public expenditure is to be controlled, it will require a series of such decisions, but I have not heard that in wider political debate. Not only have difficult decisions been made, there will be more of them and the decisions to be made will be even more difficult and will excite much more public apprehension and reaction. To be honest, anyone who is or aspires to be in Government must make that public declaration because there is no alternative.

The Finance Bill reverses many of the beliefs that existed in the Celtic tiger years, including that we had to incentivise people who were already wealthy. We have learned that, despite giving tax reliefs for many spurious areas, people who wrote off large amounts of tax and did not pay them to the State coffers still paid themselves exorbitantly high salaries and indulged in practices where they loaned shareholders' money to themselves. There was no system to bring them to account. We should be discussing the culture and lack of values as well as the euro and cent approach to making an economy work.

Despite what I said since beginning my contribution, I remain confident that this may be a period of a number of years in which difficult decisions will be made. I have faith in the people's ability to understand the nature of the difficulties we are in and in their having the resourcefulness to deal with those problems in a society we forgot during the Celtic tiger years. If we are to have a more sustainable society and an economy that is predicated on real wealth and lacks the superficiality of the Celtic tiger years, we must debate society and see the economy as an engine for that society rather than the focus of all our endeavours. When we get to that stage, Ireland will be better for it.