Nicky McFadden (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and welcome his positive demeanour although I wonder whether we live in the same country. I also am pleased his children are young because it will take so long for the country to recover from the mismanagement of the Celtic tiger that it is to be hoped that they will benefit from the recovery that will take place in years to come. The Minister of State referred to change and the change I seek is for Fianna Fáil and the Green Party to be out of office. I seek an election in order that Fine Gael will be the party in power that can rebuild trust in this country because the Government has betrayed the people. Almost 500,000 people are unemployed and I find it extraordinary that the Minister of State speaks to Members about being positive when, after 13 years in government, Fianna Fáil has destroyed this country. I find this incredible. I attended a meeting last night at which a young man stated that all of his class will be obliged to emigrate. As no apprenticeships are available and there are no jobs for graduates, whom the taxpayer has spent so much money educating, they all must emigrate.

I commend Senator Phelan on tabling this motion because Fine Gael is concerned for the small businesses of Ireland. NAMA certainly has not encouraged credit to flow. While the Minister of State stated that recapitalisation eventually will cause credit to flow, that has not been the reality thus far. Two years have elapsed since the banks were recapitalised by the taxpayer. Why can a loan guarantee scheme not be put in place to recapitalise and get credit flowing for small businesses? Every single job created by a small business generates money for the local community and for families and means taxes are paid to the Government. The Government is not helping to keep open small businesses. Local authorities insist on their rates, a 5% increase in energy costs has been imposed and in some urban areas there certainly has been no reduction in rent. I do not know what country the Minister of State is living in. I have a small business and in my experience it is impossible to make ends meet. I spoke to a lady today who has an art framing business. She told me she has not paid herself since last January but is lucky because she got a job for three days a week that now sustains her business and helps her to put bread on the table for her family.

A total of 1,132 businesses have been declared insolvent since the start of the year. While I would love to be positive, I live in reality whereas the Minister of State appears to be in cloud cuckoo land. People are going out of business every day of the year. This is the reason that, similar to Deputy Perry in the other House, Fine Gael Members in this House have proposed that a loan guarantee system be put in place to ensure credit flows to try to help people to stay in business. We have proposed that this should happen rather than the continual bailing out of the banks. It is all right for the taxpayer to do that and the Minister of State asked what would have happened had this not been done. In my opinion it would have been a fine day had Anglo Irish Bank been allowed to go to the wall.