Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

Perhaps we should not blame the Minister for that issue because it seems, from what Deputy Mattie McGrath told RTE today, that the Minister was not aware these payments were to be made, but he is aware now. He is also aware that this is money we have taken off the sick, the disabled, pensioners, young unemployed and front-line public sector workers. I met such a worker yesterday in my constituency. He is off work at present because he has a bite-mark on his hand. He works in the health sector and a patient attacked him. He has a broken nose and bruises on his face. Public sector workers such as he are the ones that others want to condemn, stating they are leeches on society and are lazy and inefficient, but these are the same fellows who walk into work in the face of danger and who know there are dangers in their job. They go into work and the Government takes money off them.

The Minister asked the question and those are the answers. The Government knows our proposals. They are costed by the Department of Finance. They contain an entirely different set priorities and they can work. We need to have a sensible argument about priorities, not the kind of tick-tacking to the effect that what my party is doing is a disgrace, with the Minister wagging his finger. What we need to say is that this is a set of proposals that can take the country down this road, and have an intellectual debate about those priorities.

Last week I launched a jobs initiative for the young unemployed, a set of proposals that I believe would take 50,000 young unemployed under the age of 25 off the dole and that would put 40,000 of them into employment and 10,000 of them into educational courses. Although there was a caveat in that regard in questioning the solidarity tax and the money it could raise, I am glad to read that a Deputy within one of the Government parties has come out and said there was merit in those proposals. That is the type of sensible debate to which I refer. Not everything said on this side of the House is off the wall and neither is everything that is said on the other side of the House. There are good initiatives and good sensible proposals among Deputies and there are restrictions and difficulties in trying to implement them.

Nobody, whether in Government or in Opposition, is elected to do damage to his or her own community or to hurt people, but because of the priorities of the Government, I believe that such is the consequence of what is happening. It is my job and the job of others in Opposition to convince people there is a fairer and better way. In that light, I propose to look at the Finance Bill and table a number of amendments. I mentioned that the issue of the remuneration of NAMA officials should come to the Houses of the Oireachtas for approval because it is our money, and also that the new VAT being imposed by the European Union should be ring-fenced and injected into the local government fund with a direction to local authorities that they use this additional funding to reduce service charges and rates. I have mentioned the excessive reliance on fair-weather consumption taxes. There are opportunities to seek out, even at this late stage, a fairer way to deal with the present state of the country.

The Finance Bill does not cut it. In the past week we have heard the European Commission state that it finds the Government's economic recovery plans optimistic and wants the Government to slash spending further, which will contract the economy even more. My party believes that what is needed is the polar opposite. We need to stimulate the economy, create employment and take the focus away from bailing out the banks. I accept we need to deal with the banks. We have a different proposal. We need to get credible financial institutions back up and lending to business, but we also need to look at other priorities which the Government is missing.

I hope my amendments may be considered by the Government. However, there is a bigger debate. I welcome the interjection by the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Power, because the Seanad is so outdated. Senator Alex White stated previously that we should be looking at how to do our business better and this should be a forum for teasing out policy. One of the points made to me when I was elected to the Seanad is that there is a different type of atmosphere in the House, that one aspect conducive to this atmosphere is that there are no higher levels or tiers in the Seanad, that everyone, bar the Cathaoirleach, is on the same level and that this creates a more friendly atmosphere. We should apply all that and the relationship between both sides in the Chamber to use this House as a real think-tank where policies can be debated, which debate is not taking place at present. We hear of Fine Gael's policy plans, of Labour's policy plans and of Sinn Féin's policy plans or alternatives in the Dáil, but the reality is that none of these gets a chance to be teased out, worked on or explored in a proper fashion. We should cut out much of the nonsense that goes on in the Seanad - many of the statements and much of the Order of Business - and, at a time of crisis, start to use this forum in the way it was really intended in the Constitution, that is, to allow the best minds in different fields to deal with the national issues of the day. There is scope to do that, but that is for a different debate. I look forward to the Committee Stage and moving my amendments.