Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senators who have attended this important debate. One would have imagined there would be a bigger interest, in particular from some Opposition groups. I am very disappointed by the attendance. I do not know if another event is taking place. I was looking forward to contributions from both sides of the House. The Senators who attended made some interesting contributions, much of which I agree with and much of which I do not. One would imagine there is no more important issue than the preparation and planning for the future development of Ireland, the children yet to be born, the roads yet to be driven and the schools yet to be attended. We cannot live in the past but must try to plan for the future. I thank Senators who turned up and showed an interest in such an important issue.

Senator Horkan is correct that a lot of catching up needs to be done. He identified a number of issues and I will not get into the specifics of all those projects as that would not be appropriate because there is a fairly large shopping list from the Seanad. The Senator failed to mention that the State was banjaxed in 2011 and was a borrower of last resort, that the economy had no money and was running on empty and the Government did not know if it would be able to keep the doors of the country open. It needs to be said on the record that the transformation of the Irish economy in a short period of time on the back of the efforts of the Irish people has been enormous. There are commentators who said a second bailout would be needed, that the State would have to go cap in hand to look for it and that all the policies pursued by the Government were wrong.

One political party opposed everything the Government did during the previous Dáil just for the sake of it. Its deputy leader said of its leader that anyone could fumble a figure. It was not the first time that Deputy Adams fumbled a figure in the hundreds of millions. I take particular issue with Sinn Féin's record on economic policy and where they were and are vis-à-visthe economic collapse. First, it has absented itself from any decision making on the island of Ireland and, secondly, it has decided to oppose for opposition's sake anything done by either the previous Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael-Labour Governments or the current Fine Gael-Independent minority Government supported by Fianna Fáil. If everything we did was wrong, we would not be in the position four years later of having a balanced budget and being able to talk about fiscal spending space. If we did as Deputy Adams suggested and told the European Union to take its money and g, and one must remember Sinn Féin has opposed every EU treaty since 1973 for the sake of it, where would we be? Where would we now be if we had taken the advice of Sinn Féin in 2011? We would be on a one-way ticket to the stone age and would not have to worry about class sizes, roads or the future development of the hospital network. The country would be akin to a modern-day basket case. Rather than saying everything the Government did was wrong or coming forward, as it did last year, with proposals that would have meant that every single person who avails of a tax credit they pay into a pension would see a cut of €800 in his or her annual take-home pay, it would be nice to see costed proposals from a party that just opposes everything.

That is the type of make it up as you go along economics of which I am tired. I admire Opposition politicians such as Senators Ó Céidigh and Horkan who make proposals based on circumstances that bear some resemblance to the economic reality of the State. However, that is not the case for a party that continues to have no regard to either the past or the present in relation to where the economy was, where it went or the policies pursued by successive Governments to do what we believed was right and resulted in us being on a trajectory to virtual full employment from an unemployment rate of 16%. We are on the way to a balanced economic budget and do not need to worry about a lender of last resort. We are on the way to being able to look after our citizens as any sovereign government should without going cap in hand to anybody. Where would we be if we followed the alternative? All Members know where we would be.