Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Deputy Calleary. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate.

Our finances are in a terrible state. The Minister of State at the Department of Finance stated in his opening contribution that, "The reality is, however, that we have no choice but to act now on the commitments that we have made to the EU Commission, EU Ministers and the ECB...". The Minister for Finance must have made several commitments to them to which we must stick until we reach our target in 2014. There will be a new way forward. The Government is treating the Opposition differently from the way it has been treated over the past 13 years. Fine Gael, led by Deputy Kenny, will play a positive role in putting forward our own plans over the next number of weeks.

In most of the speeches made by the Minister of State, Deputy Mansergh, over the past three years in the House, he referred to 1997 when Fine Gael and the Labour Party were last in government. He always mentioned the allocations it made to various projects and Departments at the time. Senator Harris made interesting comments about the Opposition earlier but, for example, he did not commend Fine Gael when it was the only party to oppose benchmarking, which played a huge part in bringing us to where we are. It was the architect of where we are because wages in the public service increased significantly and there was a corresponding increase in personal indebtedness. Senator Harris does not seem to have any problem cutting wages but the greatest problem the country faces is personal debt. That is why our current scenario is more serious than that which we faced in the 1980s and it will be much more difficult to address this because in the 1980s people did not have the same level of personal debt. When wages were increased, people took out loans to put their children through college, upgrade their homes and buy new cars and that helped to put them in this mess.

I would have preferred if the Minister of State was more specific and spelt out in detail the effect of different cost cutting measures on the economy. For instance, how much would be saved by the removal of 10,000 staff from the public service payroll? If the wages of public servants were cut by another 10%, what would that mean in the overall economic context? A few weeks ago, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation promised the creation of 300,000 new jobs. What effect will those jobs have on economic growth? How quickly will they come on stream? When Fine Gael published its NewEra document, it forecast the creation of 100,000 jobs. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance rubbished the document, yet the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation was able to come with a proposal for 300,000 jobs months later. I hope even at this late stage the Government will take our document on board. There is no timeframe for the creation of jobs proposed by the Government and it does not outline how they will be created. Reference is made to attracting foreign students, increasing tourist numbers and more funding for research and development. Apart from that, I cannot see how the Minister will create 300,000 jobs.

The Minister of State also said in his opening contribution that the adjustment in the fiscal deficit will be €15 billion. Yesterday, the Taoiseach stated this was a forecast but the Minister of State clearly said there would be a budgetary adjustment of €15 billion based on annual economic growth of 2.75%. Economists in London and elsewhere in Europe have made various predictions about Ireland over the past few weeks. However, Dr. Peter Bacon, an economist who advised the Government on housing policy, NAMA and other issues over the past ten years, has forecast the economy will not grow by more than 0.75% annually over the next number of years. The Government has relied greatly on him in recent years but he has stated economic growth annually will be between 0.5% and 0.75%. Earlier, the Minister of State predicted an economic growth rate of 2.75% annually. This prediction is significantly higher than that of Dr. Bacon and were we only to realise growth closer to Dr. Bacon's prediction of between 0.5% and 0.75% then the €15 billion figure would greatly increase and we would be in an even greater whole. The Government and the Minister for Finance in particular must give us more figures on growth targets in the various areas and this is why I am somewhat disappointed with the Minister's speech. The Minister could have provided a little more detail on the reductions that could be found or, if reductions were made in a different area, what the cost of these would be to the economy. For example, we have not heard from any Minister in recent debates about getting rid of quangos, other than the amalgamation of the VECs and their reduction in number from 32 to 16. There is no doubt that this side of the House will not be found wanting when the plans are put on the table. I welcome the fact we are holding this debate and I hope we can all pull together to get out of the situation we are in.