David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

There are many who will not be listening to this debate but who, if they were, would understand that we did put money away for a rainy day in the National Pensions Reserve Fund and that fund was emptied. It was emptied, not to invest in people or to invest in jobs, but to give to the banks to recapitalise them and pay back the bond holders. That is the reality that is facing the working people of this country.

We hear a great deal of nonsense and scare-mongering from those on the "Yes" side about the positions which are being adopted by those of us who are campaigning for a "No" vote. I would remind those same persons that they used exactly the same arguments during the Lisbon treaty campaign, that if this treaty is not passed, the sky will fall in, our economy will collapse and all that they said would happen. The people voted for the Lisbon treaty and what happened is that three times as many are out of work. Far from stability, recovery, investment and all that of the benefits they promised, our economy completely collapsed and those picking up the tab and paying the price are ordinary working people.

I have just come from a good debate hosted by the Digital Hub agency. I commend the agency because it was a worthwhile exercise. It organised a debate between a number of politicians - a member from each of Fine Gael, Labour, Sinn Féin and People Before Profit. It was organised by the management and the staff. It was a worthwhile exercise and other companies should do likewise. The people at the agency are clear that it does not matter what way we vote on this; we still have the same problems in Ireland which need to be addressed.

The two problems we have in Ireland which, I would hope we all would accept, are the lack of growth and investment and the need for jobs. This treaty does not do anything to bring about any of that. What it does is force countries to reduce their deficit far to quickly and in a way that will hamper their domestic economy. We had that in this country. The Exchequer deficit in 2008 was €12.7 billion. Four years and five budgets later some €24.6 billion has been taken out of the economy as part of all of those adjustments. Despite all the pain that went with that, such as the universal social charge, cuts in hospitals, cuts in schools - we saw the Tallaght report by HIQA today - and what all of that means for working people, the Exchequer deficit has increased. It is now over €13 billion. This approach has not worked and it will not work.

What we need is a strategy to get people back to work. We need growth and investment.