Ivana Bacik (Independent)

One woman's interaction is another woman's interruption. That is heckling by any other name. I am happy to deal with that but I did not heckle Senator Boyle although I was severely provoked. It is a source of great national shame and humiliation that we brought in the IMF, the EU and the ECB. As Morgan Kelly said, we are now dependent on the kindness of strangers and they are not very kind strangers. The ECB and the EU have been far from kind to us. Their interest lies in sustaining the European banking system and the eurozone, not sustaining our economy. That is clear from the views they take in the memorandum of understanding and the projections provided. They are now pulling our strings and dictating our economic policy. No matter what fine words the Minister dresses it up in, that is the case. We have lost our national sovereignty and to what end. There is still no guarantee we will not ultimately default and international economists say we have kicked the can down the road with the four year plan and the budget. The markets still have no confidence in us and our growth forecasts have been revised downwards by the European Commission. Nevertheless, the Minister for Finance still seeks to talk up our prospects in his budget speech but people do not believe that any more. People have lost all confidence in him and in his assurances.

It is time we stepped out of the denial of the Government rhetoric and language and faced economic reality and the alternatives presented to us. The Labour Party has presented options and an alternative way to stimulate recovery. Rather than take €6 billion out of the economy in this budget, which the Labour Party believes is unsustainable and unjustifiable, €4.5 billion should be taken out now and money should be left aside to stimulate growth and promote recovery through the development of a strategic investment bank and what Deputy Joan Burton described as the three Rs, reflation, reform and redistribution. The Labour Party would not have sought to target the least well-off or those on social welfare in the obscene way this Government has done.