Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

While I register that last point, needless to say, the Senator would not expect me to either anticipate or pre-empt any budget measures relating to mortgages.

The Government amendment refers to the substantial investment already made in energy infrastructure and water services. It invites the Government to continue to invest in those economic priorities that will assist economic recovery. It also invites the National Pensions Reserve Fund to continue to manage its assets with a view to making the maximum contribution to the cost of future pension liabilities in a manner that will maintain this country's commitment to long-term fiscal stability. I will come in due course to those elements of the Government's amendment that specifically address the Fine Gael motion.

The Government welcomes the publication of Fine Gael's document, Rebuilding Ireland — A New Era for the Irish Economy, as a contribution to public debate. As Senator Bradford said, it puts forward options and perhaps the comments made here will help the party further refine its ideas. Given the economic and budgetary challenges Ireland faces, the Government is open to considering any alternative constructive proposals for financing public capital projects. Ireland still has particular infrastructure ambitions and objectives which need to be progressed. We must continue to invest in key infrastructure, if we are to position ourselves for a sustainable economic recovery and build an economy that will be competitive and support employment into the future.

Many of the proposals in the Fine Gael motion replicate the Government's smart economy document which was published last December, in particular in the areas of investment in energy efficiency and new technology. In that context, the Government welcomes this as an acknowledgment — implicit anyway — of its positive initiatives in these areas.

As well as stabilising public finances and improving competitiveness, supporting those who become unemployed and supporting Irish business and multinational companies, the key elements of the Government's smart economy document published last December include investing in research and development, incentivising more research and development capacity in Ireland, implementing a new green deal to move away from fossil fuel-based energy production through investment in renewable energy to promote the green enterprise sector and the creation of green collar jobs.

I have some experience in the past of working on economic policy documents in Opposition, so I am familiar with the genre. They are designed to answer the question, "What is your alternative?" in a plausible and popular way and, in present circumstances, to sound tough without specifying anything that would seriously frighten any interest groups. Very often such policies involve repackaging or restructuring existing Government activities to make them look new or in effect shifting around the deck chairs without necessarily adding value.

Turning to the Fine Gael proposal, it is a very incomplete answer in terms of what needs to be done now with perhaps the tough bits left to a separate document published this afternoon but with which I am not yet familiar. I do not believe that it is thoroughly thought through. It is aspirational and the job numbers proposed are unsubstantiated. Some 100,000 jobs is a very round number. This type of promise is reminiscent of a previous era in politics in the western world where politicians made dramatic promises about precisely how many jobs their policies would create in a specific timeframe. Furthermore, the Fine Gael proposal is based on further large-scale borrowing and envisages a new quango-type structure with no clear mandate.

I agree with Senator Quinn's reservations, in particular that politicians do not create jobs, although with some limited exceptions. They create conditions in which jobs can be created. Establishing a body called a new economy and recovery authority does not necessarily mean it will deliver a new economy or recovery.

It does not mean that it will not either. I remember in 1987 Fianna Fáil's programme for national recovery with the social partners brought about national recovery.

The Government certainly does not propose to set up another State body, at a time when we are committed to reducing the numbers and improving efficiency and effectiveness through rationalisation of State bodies, a move for which Fine Gael previously indicated strong support. Fine Gael proposes to fund half its programme, €9.2 billion, from the NPRF and believes that its proposals would be off balance sheet. In principle, establishing companies to provide services on a commercial basis would bring such investments off balance sheet but it would be important to ensure that this was implemented properly. To the extent that the NPRF was used to fund new expenditure and this expenditure was on balance sheet, it would need to displace other elements of the NDP in order to maintain the general Government deficit at the required level. I note that in the fairly recent past the Fine Gael leader simply said that the NDP would be scrapped. The question arises as to the extent to which the jobs are additional or in substitution. To be fair to Fine Gael, parts of its document specify that these are additional to what would be already anticipated. Otherwise, the Fine Gael proposal would increase the general Government deficit, which is the last thing that Ireland needs at a time of severe budgetary stress and when we need to guard our reputation.

The current structure of the NPRF operating under a commercial investment mandate with a view to making as great a contribution as possible to the cost of social welfare and public service pensions from 2025 to at least 2055 has been commented on favourably by international commentators and the credit rating agencies as an indication of the country's commitment to long-term fiscal stability. A large-scale raid on the kitty in current circumstances in a manner in which the money would not flow back into the fund as was the case with the banks' recapitalisation would not impress the markets, on which we depend for our ability to borrow at reasonable rates. At a time of heightened sensitivity about Ireland's fiscal and economic positions, the existence of the NPRF is taken very positively as a sign of our determination to maintain a fiscal policy which takes account of the potential difficulties posed by longer-term expenditure trends.

I regard the Fine Gael proposals in their present state as lacking in rigour. I am not convinced they bear much, if any, resemblance to what Fine Gael would actually do with partners in government. A short while ago the Fine Gael leader spoke about selling off semi-State bodies, although this is a particularly poor time to do that if one were trying to realise the value of, in many cases, a long investment by the people in such bodies. That proposal would prevent any danger of what Senator O'Toole referred to, getting too close to the trade unions——