David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

-----that created the sheer disaster we have in the economy at the moment. It is interesting to note that what keeps coming up over and over again is that somehow Sinn Féin's policies would wreck the economy. The economy is wrecked. It is the policies we warned against that were at fault. There are genuine alternatives. Some of the proposals we advocated were about having proper regulation of the banks and not diluting the taxation system, which we did, especially for those at the top who were given generous tax reductions. The tax base was hollowed out during the Celtic tiger years. We are in the current situation because of the big gap in our public finances. That is because the bubble burst and our public finances were not sustainable and we have to try to improve them again. The reality is we are not asking the higher earners to pay. We are asking the lower earners and people at the bottom.

We have always said that what we want is not a permanent bailout situation but that we would eventually get back to the bond markets, which is where we need to be. In an ideal situation we would not have to borrow at all but the reality is that sometimes one needs to borrow and at the moment we have to borrow. One must ask why the bond markets locked this country out of the markets altogether. Why will they not lend to us at reasonable rates?