Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I am delighted Senator Quinn has told us we will live to be 79. Perhaps in my lifetime, therefore, I will see the interest being paid on NAMA.

I subscribe to the calls for a rolling debate on the economy, especially on the fact that the Government is obsessed with trying to get public spending in order. However, there is absolutely no policy on job creation and protection. While we are throwing that into the mix, we must realise it is absolutely appalling to hear, day in, day out, right-wing commentators and representatives from IBEC telling us all about the need of the ordinary worker to take a cut in pay. The public sector worker is being scapegoated by this Government to find an exit strategy out of the recession. The public sector employees have already been hit with an income levy, the health levy and a pension levy. From what we now hear, they are to be hit with a 4.5% salary cut in the upcoming budget.

Let us remain cognisant of what happened in FÁS and of the manner in which bankers behaved, and of the audacity of one banker to appear on national television three weeks ago and target single mothers on the basis of a nasty, vindictive school of thought. The bankers are the people who got us into this recession and they are they ones who should pay most as we try to find our way out of it.

I agree wholeheartedly with the points my colleague Senator O'Toole made consistently in the media, both last year and recently on "The Week in Politics". In the 1980s, when emigration and unemployment rates were very high and when interest rates were running into double figures, we were told we had to engage in social partnership to find our way out of the recession. Very wealthy people in the country were siphoning millions offshore although we did not know this at the time. Let us be aware of this and let it stand to us as a lesson on how to deal with the current financial difficulty. Let us stop scapegoating the public sector worker.