Michael Mullins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join in the welcome to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Oisín Quinn, as well as to Senator Mary White's visitors whom she introduced. In her contribution she mentioned the cuts that had to be made in the past three budgets, but she forgot to remind the House of the reasons all of those cuts were necessary and the appalling mess left behind for the Government to tidy up. I welcome the update published yesterday on Ireland's stability programme and ask the Leader for a debate on it after the Easter break. It contains some encouraging figures which indicate that GDP is expected to grow by 2.1% in 2014, increasing to 2.7% next year and 3.5% by 2018. Employment is projected to grow by 2% every year to 2018, which would see unemployment levels falling to below 8%. Given that 61,000 jobs were created in 2013, we hope that figure will continue to increase. Inflation is likely to remain low and projected to be at a figure of 0.5% for 2014. We need the Minister for Finance in the House to tease out some of these figures in early course. While the signs are encouraging, we need to remain cautious in our budgetary planning for the coming year. It is projected that €2 billion will have to be cut from our expenditure in budget 2015; therefore, it is a case of a lot done but still a long way to go. We need to discuss the roadmap with the Minister for Finance after Easter.