Shane Ross (Independent)

I was struck by Senator O'Malley's comments. Regardless of some of the debate's party political spats, we must recognise that we are facing a large schism in society. The situation is fundamental. According to Senator O'Malley, she was raised at a time when all her generation did was save money to go abroad, a situation she never wants to recur. While it is now recurring, it is worse in some ways. Recently, I did a little work to determine to where our unemployed are emigrating. They have nowhere to go, the implications of which will, in some ways, be worse for society than the previous recession. This time, members of a well educated workforce will be rightly discontented in the country of their birth without any outlet for the education, enthusiasm and energy they have been brought up to have. The implications are mind boggling, given that the numbers unemployed will reach 400,000 by the end of the year.

As well as economic problems, we will face unprecedented social problems unless we somehow get ourselves out of this awful mess. I have listened to the arguments on all sides. To which side one belongs determines who one blames. The Opposition blames the Government and the Government blames the world. This is politics and it is fair enough. However, the world and its markets have made a judgment on us in terms of the cost of borrowing money overseas, namely, that the Government's situation is exceptionally more fragile than those of other European countries, apart from Greece, which is above or below us from time to time.

The judgment of those who have to put their money where their mouths are is that we are in a worse situation than anywhere else and they will not lend us money at any reasonable rate unless we do something about it. I have not looked at the rate today but as far as I know that has not changed since the Government introduced its package on Tuesday. The markets continue to watch us with a great deal of scepticism about what we have done. They may or may not be right; we will have to wait and see. For some time to come we must face the scepticism of the international markets about our ability to get out of our economic situation. I take the argument made by many on all sides of the House that were we not in the eurozone we would probably be in a much worse position. That might not have been the reason for our entering the eurozone but it is a side benefit of monumental proportions in our present situation.

The Minister of State's speech was somewhat benign and lacking the sort of alarm we ought to feel. I distrust the references to social solidarity because they do not mean anything. He stated: "Unless we are prepared to shoulder the burden collectively now, much greater sacrifices may be forced on us at a later date." I have never heard such a clear warning. When decoded it means that the International Monetary Fund, IMF, or others will impose this on us. I do not expect the Minister of State to say that but if he says such sacrifices "may be forced upon us", there is little doubt that he means the IMF is at the door. The only problem is that by the time the IMF gets around to Ireland, it may not have any money left because it has been involved in situations in Ukraine and Iceland and elsewhere which will not leave it with unlimited sums of money to rescue Ireland. It would be useful if we faced the problems head on.

I am interested in the mindset that we cut now and introduce taxes later in the year. People are sceptical of some of the cuts. It is inevitable that taxes will rise at the end of the year. We are beginning to get hints that even the sacred cow of corporation tax will be tackled. I wonder whether it has occurred to the Government to cut corporation tax rather than raise it. The movement of multinationals such as Dell and others from Galway and elsewhere out of the country has not gathered a great deal of momentum yet, although it is alarming to see big and small ticket names moving.