Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Similarly in the situation in which we find ourselves, my belief is quite simple. If we did not have the bottle to make the adjustment to allow us to continue to fund the services of the State, I would not be here talking about cutting pensions and other payments. We would be talking about a one third cut of everything across the board because the State would run out of borrowed money and we would need to live on the tax take of approximately €32 billion or €33 billion along with the PRSI bringing it up to €40 billion. We would be so short of money, that is what we would need to do.

Being faced with the dilemma of making the €6 billion in adjustments we have made or having to make one three times greater, it was a no-brainer to me to bite the bullet regardless of how misunderstood or misrepresented we would be and to make the hard decision because any other decision would have visited much greater hardship on our people, especially those who depend on my Department for their slice of the €21 billion we will pay out in the coming year. I keep looking for the magic bullets. I have not yet seen a magic bullet that did not have within it some very explosive content and which, if one tried to use it, would visit much greater havoc than has been visited already.

There are two popular theories. One would be if one starts reneging on one's debts, one cannot borrow money. It is difficult for a person to say to the bank manager that they will not give back what the manager lent them and that they want more money at the same time. Then there are those who say the banking system is of no consequence. I often wonder how many people have thought what would happen if everyone woke up tomorrow morning and the banks were closed. They would have no access to their accounts, could not get money from the ATM and literally the only money they could use would be the money in their pockets. It is vital we make the hard cuts. Fine Gael is the only Opposition party that has come to that reality. It sometimes gives us proposals within the €6 billion that are somewhat fanciful but at least it recognises the reality that unless one funds the State, what we are doing in this Bill could be considerably worse. No one in the past two years has convinced me that there is some easy way out of this that would keep everything intact and give us the money we need to run the State.