Feargal Quinn (Independent)

Senator MacSharry spoke about the suggestion of a subsidy for the traders and retailers near the Border. While I have no idea how this could be made to work, it seems a much better solution than the proposals I have heard from others. My mother came from County Armagh and my father came from County Down. My only sister married in Portadown. It is anathema to me to hear people suggest we not being Irish if we shop across the Border. I am not a partitionist but people who argue we should not shop across the Border are partitionists and we need to fight very hard to avoid that sort of thing.

I was in Brussels yesterday at a meeting at which 20 of the 27 EU countries were represented and we had plenty of time to discuss the economy. There is clear recognition of what the Minister for Finance has done and what has been achieved in recent months in Ireland. I was impressed that some people knew we had been spending €20 billion a year more than we could afford and that it was costing us approximately €400 million a week. The people present were not economists as such; they were traders, business people, retailers, wholesalers and people in distribution. Greece is the country of which we all know and it is a reminder to us of what has been achieved and how we have managed to get out, but we have no room to relax.

The example of Latvia was cited to me. It had a GDP of -17% and is now down to -2%. Ukraine, whose Parliament's Speaker visited the House during the Order of Business today, came from a GDP deficit of -15% to +2% or +3%, all inside a very short period of time. It is possible to achieve it. We are no longer part of the PIGS group of countries and I hope we do not get back into it. It is a reminder to us that we need to keep our attention on it and cannot afford to relax. Somehow or other we all - not just the Minister - need to ensure we can convince the rest of our community, especially the public sector unions, which do not seem to understand, how serious it could have been and how serious it could still be if we do not manage to achieve what we have set out to do. It very difficult to explain to them why senior civil servants did not seem to have the same setback that the junior civil servants had. Perhaps the Minister might again explain his thinking on that.

I am concerned that some of the steps the Minister is taking could damage our ability to get on top of things in the long term. One of them is the carbon tax. Senator Twomey has already spoken about this. Yesterday France abandoned the carbon tax because many French business people thought it would put them at a disadvantage compared with other EU counterparts which did not have a carbon tax. One media website stated: "Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister François Fillon said the country's environmental policy needed to be 'better coordinated with the European Union', particularly so that French companies do not lose ground against their German counterparts." My attention was only drawn to this at approximately 11 o'clock this morning. It goes on to quote the countries that have introduced or plan to introduce a carbon tax and those which have advised they are definitely not going to do so. It also quotes those countries that do not want tax harmonisation, of which we are one. It is therefore highly unlikely there will be tax harmonisation. We might find ourselves placing our businesses at a disadvantage because we have a carbon tax when our competitors do not.

This brings me on to my main point which is that we depend so much on exports and have been very successful in that regard. I had coffee yesterday with a man from Finland who spoke about the great difficulty that country has had because its exports have dropped quite dramatically. Our exports have not had any such dramatic drop and we must not do anything that might affect that. The danger is that anything that is not involved in exports may be in danger. When I was in college, Professor George O'Brien, who was dean of the faculty of commerce, and James Meenan explained to us that a country is a bit like a household and if one takes in one's washing for other members of the family but does not actually export or manage to get anything from outside the country, one is not going to be able to afford to live for too long on that basis. We need to focus our attention on exports to ensure we can succeed.

I very much agree with the overall sentiment of the Finance Bill, which aims to help to foster enterprise and employment, hopefully as the entire world economy is starting to improve. A few years ago I met the Secretary of Labor in the Administration of President George W. Bush. She said her job was not to create employment; her job was to create the environment so that the private sector could create the employment itself. When I hear calls for us to create jobs, I feel the jobs are much more likely to be achieved by the environment the Minister is trying to create in this Bill. The world economy is starting to improve, I hope, despite concerns about double dips. There are some positive signs.

Sitting suspended at 1.30 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.