Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. He has always been generous in the time he has given to the Seanad.

I was interested in listening to Senator Mary White and the practical comments she made, which obviously come from her business background. She made a lot of sense, and made the point that she was frustrated reading through the document that so many issues in it had not already been addressed; I felt the same. It is frustrating to see so many structural reforms that have not been made. Her party, however, has been in power for 13 years and had the opportunity to address many of these structural issues but did not and, in that sense, wasted the boom.

I agree with Senator Donohoe when he says this is a framework for a more honest discussion, a new politics about the choices we must make. Fine Gael will publish a response to the document that will outline our approach, and we do not consider we are tied to the detail of the plan. Clearly, a new Government will not be tied to the individual policy choices in the plan; the targets are fixed, but the means to arrive at them are not. We accept, however, the broad parameters of the report, remaining committed to the target of reducing the deficit to 3%.

There is much in the document that makes sense. The initiatives in the tourism section are welcome. We have the infrastructure, the hotels and roads, but we do not have the tourists and we need to see initiatives in that area. There are many other practical suggestions about what needs to happen.

If we are to bring about these changes, we must display the political will to make the structural reforms necessary. There must be a Government with the will to do what is necessary to reform our approach to public services and the political system. That is what Fine Gael has and what we have outlined in our policies in recent months.

There is no reference in the document to the banking issue. We do not know what the impact the issue will have on jobs and the budget crisis, given the amounts we still might have to pay into the banks.

There is so much to say about this. On the subject of the cut in the minimum wage, the interaction with the social welfare system will have to be examined, because we do not want people to be caught in the poverty trap and feel it is not worth their while to work. Such interaction and the poverty traps that people can easily find themselves in are key issues.

Families, as Senator Donohoe said, had hoped for certainty from this plan. They were concerned about whether the plan would make clear the reality that is facing us. It does to some degree, but if one is on social welfare, which is facing €2 billion in cutbacks, it does not. How much of this will be obtained from waste reduction and efficiencies, and how much will be obtained from changes that need to be made to systems, such as rent supplement, that we know are not working effectively? Families dependent on social welfare face uncertainty; they do not know where the €2 billion in cuts will fall.

This is also the case for the reductions in the health budget. What will be the impact of the €444 million of reductions in procurement and demand-led schemes on people who really need their medicines every week? Will they still be able to afford them? More than €746 million per year is being taken out of our health system.

One of my concerns is about the effect of the plan on young people. The plan seems to assume that many will emigrate. They will be charged more for third level fees and funding to third level institutions will be reduced. What impact will this have on young people from disadvantaged families who wish to access third level education? There are cutbacks in the school completion programme. Where is the hope for young people and the ambition for their generation? I am concerned about this.

I do not believe the plan will result in growth in the economy. Some of the assumptions in the document about the level of growth may unfortunately turn out not to be correct. There is much more I would like to say about the document, but we will have another opportunity.