Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and I hope he does not have to run for President because I am sure he will be Taoiseach. Maybe he will run for President after he has been Taoiseach.

Last week a survey of 27 countries ranked people's trust in Government, business, NGOs and the media. Ireland ranked the worst, with only one in five having trust in those former pillars of society. We all know the various reasons for that, the crisis in charities in the case of NGOs and the banking sector in the case of business. In Ireland, people's level of trust in the elites was the lowest of all the 27 countries surveyed. Those countries included China, which says a lot about Irish people's confidence in politics.

The reason for this is the lack of equity in our system. I do not know if the Minister read it but there was an interesting piece in the Irish Independentat the weekend which stated that some 260 people controlled €76 billion in assets and that the bottom half of the population have €56 billion among them all. That is a level of inequity that is staggering and it is not going to get any better as the wealthy have got wealthier in this crisis. I recall the infamous words of former US President George W. Bush when, addressing a crowd at a fundraising event, he welcomed the haves and the have-mores. Some of these people caused the crisis and now people view them as having profited from it.

Some of the issues brought up by my colleagues opposite show why there is a lack of confidence in the political system, such as the charge against this and previous governments that they are borrowing money to buy votes. When we cannot balance the books, the idea of giving ourselves a pay increase as politicians is hardly likely to improve our poll ratings. The confidence of the Irish people and people in the 27 countries that were polled will not be restored when they understand that the proposal for public sector pay increases involves politicians also getting a pay increase, and borrowing money to do so. That is, unfortunately, one of the proposals.