Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

The Minister of State is very welcome and I thank him for being here.

We have the four year plan, and while I welcome that, it is a four year Government plan, not a cross-party one. It has some strengths, however, and I am delighted that corporation tax has not been touched because this is critical for the 150,000 FDI jobs. What this initiative lacks, however, is a job creation plan. Neither is there a stimulus plan and that is something we believe to be essential.

As the Minister of State knows, Fine Gael is committed to reducing the budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2014 and this is the target. With ever changing figures as regards the national debt, unfortunately this appears to be short on detail. What we really have in the plan are just the figures on how we are going to reach our targets in 2011. We do not have the specifics for 2012-14, and that leaves much to the imagination.

I shall deal specifically with two areas, education and health. I speak on education because I am the Fine Gael spokesperson in the Seanad for this area. We all know education is the driver of growth. The OECD has said that the three crucial areas for growth are education, trade and reform, in terms of leaner government, so that the State may work more efficiently. We therefore have to look carefully at how education is being handled, and what I see is less restructuring than cutting. I would have liked better use of resources to bring about improved and better results. Only today we heard that one in seven children is not being adequately taught maths and English at primary school level, and 20% of our teachers are unprepared. What could this plan have done to make this situation better?