Anthony Lawlor (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and will try to be as brief as possible. We are at a crossroads in our economy. People have major expectations, in particular after the past number of years where we went through difficult times. We are now coming out of the difficulties and people can see ahead. They expect what they got during the boom times. It is crucially important that we manage those expectations.

The previous Dáil developed a broad tax base which we need to keep, irrespective of what people are shouting for such as the removal of property tax. Without a broad tax base one can be certain that what happened in the past will happen again, namely, boom and bust economics. We certainly do not want that.

I am glad we are putting a rainy day fund in place. The fund established by the former Minister, Charlie McCreevy, was used incorrectly. It should have been used for infrastructure within the economy rather than given to banks to allow them to pay off their debts and bail them out. The rainy day fund should be used when there is an economic downturn to assist those areas in the economy which are not performing in order to get them working again.

The Minister of State and I will have different viewpoints on our debt. The American economy grows its GDP rather than paying down debt and manages to run trillions of dollars of debt each year. It grows it GDP so that, as a percentage, the debt becomes smaller and smaller.

We need to have something in the budget for employed people who are returning to work and are availing of internal training. We are training people to get work, but because we are at full employment we need more in-service training. I thank Senator Burke for sharing time.