Dan Boyle (Green Party)

Just as Zhou Enlai said when speaking of the French Revolution, it is a bit too soon to tell about the international crisis and our own particular variant of it. However, there are some hopeful signs. We do not know yet whether the international crisis will be a V-type recession or a W-type recession. We have seen encouraging signs that France and Germany, two of our main trading partners, are coming out of recession. As both are eurozone countries, it gives us some hope and confidence. We have also had a relatively positive report today from the Irish Exporters Association showing that Ireland is one of the few countries in the developed world that has an increasing amount of exports with a 5% increase in the past year alone. Having listened to the previous speaker refer to Finland, it is interesting to note that the decrease in Finland in the last recorded year was 40%.

While there are reasons to feel hopeful for the future, we have less control over other factors, which will have a serious impact on the social as well as the economic outlook for the country. Chief among those is unemployment, which is far too high and unfortunately will grow higher until it comes back under control. To restore an economy we need appropriate amounts of hope and confidence. Recession breeds the opposite; it breeds fear and uncertainty. The challenge for the political system and not just for Government is to build on what is good and what we can go forward with and build upon further. This week's global economic forum touched upon some of those themes. While we often take an industrial approach to the economy, what the country has going for it as a tradable commodity in which we can take a great deal of pride and from which we can get an economic value are issues like our cultural identity and how that translates into the wider world. That could be manifest in how we structure our tourism industry.

There are continuing imbalances in our economy. Our export-led growth comes largely from foreign direct investment companies. We lack an indigenous economic sector. We really need to develop that in the future. One of the main gains from the Celtic tiger era was the sense of self-confidence that never existed at any other time in our economic history. If we are to recover we need to tap into that again. We cannot allow it to be dispirited and disappear from the fragile place from which it seems to have come. If we believe in ourselves as a people we can achieve.

The Minister of State has referred to other parallel events in his opening statement. Getting the financial engine of the economy is key to that. There are ongoing debates among Government and Opposition parties as to whether the right approach has been taken. As someone who has been involved in the ongoing internal debates on this matter, I believe the Government is taking the right approach. NAMA is still a developing animal. From the original publication of the draft Bill as a consultative document earlier in the summer to the figures the Minister released on an indicative basis to the stock market's reaction to that in the subsequent rise in the value of bank shares, I believe continuing balancing needs to be done. While NAMA exists to make our financial services viable, it does not exist to profit the owners of the banks and those who work with the banks at the expense of the taxpayer. We need to complete that balancing. I encourage Members in this House from all parties to consider that exercise from that point of view. Even if we were so minded, I do not believe there are models we could put in place now that would achieve that.

Living in a deflationary cycle in our economy at this stage brings about the demands over where we stand in terms of public expenditure. This is open to misinterpretation. The Government's approach puts public expenditure cuts in a secondary place. The main instrument in dealing with our budgetary situation continues to be borrowing, which will amount to €20 billion this year alone. The plan for the period up to 2013 will require additional borrowing each year until we can try to get down to 3% over and above our annual budget to meet the criteria for membership of the euro. That will still be quite difficult. We are borrowing €20 billion now with possibly €16 billion next year and €12 billion the following year. In a sense we are lucky that our debt has become so low as a proportion of GDP. Even after this year the €20 billion we are borrowing and the money we will be putting forward towards NAMA will only put us at the average debt level of all European countries. Having had the lowest debt, we have come up to the average. Even at the end of this year, our nearest neighbour will have a higher level of debt than us. Although we are talking ourselves down, we must remember our economic standing and statistics are still quite favourable in international comparisons. If we use that as a platform, we can overcome our current problems. The challenge for the political system and, I accept, the Government is to make sure that platform can be reached in the quickest possible time, that it is done in the fairest possible way and that the benefits of the economic strength we achieve through improving our economic indicators are shared among all our citizens. There will be plenty of debates and initiatives. However, despite the catcalling and finger-pointing, my party is part of a Government which is trying to achieve this and, despite the circumstances, achieving it to the greatest extent possible. I am confident, given the timeframe we have set ourselves and the policies being pursued, that we can come through.