Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael)

Like all the other speakers I welcome the Minister of State to the House. He has been very faithful to this House. I was going to refer to him as a man of the House but that would not be too kind given his status now. Senator Norris referred to his speech being rather dull which may be the fault of the figures and the situation. I refer instead to the speeches he wrote himself in a previous existence and supplied to people who were then in his position. Senator Norris quoted Senator Ross who bemoaned the fact on the Order of Business today that we would not have the Minister for Finance in the House this evening. He referred to the Minister for Finance as the real McCoy and did not think the Minister of State fitted the bill. If I may say so in a kind way, I think this Minister of State is the real McCoy.

I will move on to deal with this measure. The watchword must be fairness and balance. This pension levy must be fair in respect of people's ability to pay and this must be the acid test. However, I think it starts too low. It does not meet all the tests in regard to being fair and balanced. I would have something to say about the public bodies and the reduction in professional fees. It is not that I do not welcome a reduction in fees and value for money and reducing costs, but it is the method proposed in section 9 of the Bill that I refer to. There is no doubt that in our time, this is a unique crisis. The national finances are sadly in a mess. Of course we are all in this together to save our economy. These are truly exceptional circumstances. In a sense this is too easy a first step perhaps, it lacks comprehensiveness and it is missing an overall dimension. I assure Senator Hanafin who referred to the Opposition as not being interested or committed to social partnership that of course we are and he might learn more of that tomorrow. My party in particular and the Opposition in general is in touch with all the social partners and we are totally committed to fairness. This Bill should provide for a review in the short term. We hope we will not languish in this state of affairs forever.

I can identify with much of what was stated by previous speakers. Senator Quinn spoke about small bites. However, small bites are not enough when the Government should have more front-loaded measures. Senator O'Malley referred to tough medicine and perhaps we should have this rather than the drip drip we seem to have. Any good business model has a good comprehensive plan. This measure lacks this with regard to an economic recovery plan.

Like other speakers, I enjoyed Senator Harris and we always do. He struck a chord when he spoke about drawing in people. Of course he is correct. Everybody wants to get on with it, we are all playing on the same side with regard to our economy, gaining stability in our banks and moving forward as quickly as we can. I particularly liked his proposal and I am sure people would measure up to their patriotic duty. Senator Harris spoke about retired teachers being willing to step into the breach and become special needs teachers or fitting the bill in whatever other respects they could and should and I have no doubt they would.

Senator O'Malley gave us on this side of the House a slight lecture on responsibility. I assure her and I think it is patently obvious that Deputy Richard Bruton's middle name is "responsibility". It is stamped all over us and the leader of our party, Deputy Enda Kenny. I spoke here one day on something Senator O'Malley touched on, namely, a national bond. Call it what one will, a national recovery bond or whatever, I am sure people in our diaspora throughout the world would contribute to such a bond. Senator O'Toole spoke about such a bond approximately one month ago and I supported him at the time. I felt a bond could come from the other side of the social partnership. Several bonds could be put in place and they would all do well. Perhaps this is what is needed.

The Minister of State spoke about the Government needing to borrow €18 billion this year at steep interest rates to finance capital spending. He stated the national debt would rise to more than 45% of GNP and spending on interest costs will come to €4.5 billion or 12% of total tax revenue in 2009. These are frightening figures. I have thought always, as I am sure have most Senators, that the first basic rule in economics is that we must cut our cloth according to our measure. With regard to this, we know now that less than 10% of those paying income tax pay half of all of the income tax collected. In recent days, I was surprised to learn we have 6,000 citizens——