New emigrants victims of banking corruption
Issued : Saturday 17 April, 2010
Statement by Joan Burton TD
Minister for Social Protection
Try and create a mental picture of Ireland's present Government. Here's one. An abandoned car, lying derelict in a scrap yard. The once proud bodywork has rusted beyond recognition
The engine is clapped out and nothing Brian the mechanic does can get a spark of life out of it.
Bits keep falling off and every day it looks ever more dilapidated, ever less roadworthy.
And, judging from the most recent bank bailout, this particular vehicle has become unsafe at any speed.
Brian Cowen has got everything wrong from the day he entered the Department of Finance right up to the catastrophic decision on that fateful night when he opted to protect Anglo Irish bank at any price with a blanket guarantee that is today a millstone on the entire economy and will remain a millstone for years to come.
Still no inquiry.
Still no answers.
Billions have been devoted over the past 18 months to protect our financial system from alleged Armageddon, with not a murmur of value for money.
This mind boggling sum is more than has ever been spent on any project by any government in our history.
For what enduring purpose, may I ask?
I can tell you the cost.
This year we will lose 100,000 of our people through emigration. [Even with that we still have a huge unemployment rate, especially among the young.]
Ministers shrug off these facts as the casualties of war.
They are no such thing.
They are the deliberate casualties of a set of policies that gives priority to the rescue of one particular bank and one building society whose sole claim to fame is that they were joined at the hip to Fianna Fail in the boom years.
This delinquent bank looked after the developers.
In turn the developers looked after Fianna Fail and today Fianna Fail is using our money to repay the debt it owes them, no matter how many billions it costs and how many jobs disappear in the process.
It is an entirely cynical, deeply corrupt exercise and the young men and women who are applying for Canadian and Australian work visas are the human casualties of that corruption.
The core of our economic strategy is to reverse that and to put investment in jobs to the front and centre of public policy.
All we have got so far on jobs is a timid mishmash of pathetic gestures introduced for political cover.
For us job investment has to have as great a status as budgetary measures in the next phase of recovery. It is only when we get to grips with the employment issue that we can build public confidence in recovery.
This is a fundamental point. It is a gross deception to pretend Ireland's economic problems are wholly caused by international conditions.
That is a lie.
The reality is that Ireland's economic collapse is mainly due to the fall in domestic demand, the huge drop in spending by Irish consumers, households and businesses. That has been exacerbated by the slowdown in public investment and the casual decision by the Minister to include a €1 billion cut in the capital budget for next year.
We gave the Minister a fair wind in the last budget by an unprecedented consent to a € 4 billion adjustment and they wasted that cover through the unfair choices they made in how that money could be raised.
I will not give any consent this year to any package that includes so deep a cut in the public investment required to sustain and create employment.
Not all cuts are equal.
Some have a short term effect and, however painful, may be necessary. But others cut deep into the chances for recovery by restricting spending on job training, on school building, on transport and on broadband, all vital ingredients of a recovery programme and equally vital ingredients in building confidence.
There are difficult choices in the choice of projects and there has to be care and scrutiny to achieve the best results. There are lower prices available now for certain investments. The multiplier effect is more favourable than ever before which makes the case for capital spending stronger today than ever.
Why then is there a blank cheque for Anglo Irish while the door is closed firmly to those projects that can offer stimulus at a very competitive price and boost confidence at the same time.
We can face sacrifices even harsher than what we have endured so far if it is clear that that they offer worthwhile returns and offer the prospect of reduced dole queues and lesser emigration.
We are a resilient people. We can take many hits if the goal is worth the effort. Community effort is part of the national psyche.
What we will not endure is the sight of our sacrificed wealth being bundled for transport to incinerators called Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide.
We are resilient and patriotic. But we are not stark raving mad , prepared to tolerate such waste while our young people shrug off their chances at home to find their feet abroad.
Delegates, this party is prepared for the challenges of Government but I have to tell you this. Taking office at the dawn of lean years and the scorched earth that we will inherit will be no easy task.
Our party has to persuade the country to invest in the future and pay for past profligacy, both at the same time.
We have to pay for more new schools and infrastructure than ever.
At the very same time we will need to ask the public to endure many painful adjustments to entitlements that are their due just when public trust in government is at its lowest point ever due to the policies pursued for so long by Bertie Ahern and his faithful servant Brian Cowen.
We have the chance to win the next election if and only if we can co-opt a significant number of independent voters who have never before given a Labour candidate a passing glance or a second thought.
Today we have to earn that second thought and that passing glance from those people who know in their guts that the country is on the wrong track and are desperately on the look out for a message of nation-building, a message they know that Fianna Fail cannot deliver.
You know, delegates, we have sent soldiers and aid workers to developing countries to help that nation building task and to create institutions of good governance. Today, Fianna Fail's legacy is that we have to start all over again to achieve those very same tasks at home.
We cannot teach good governance away from home when we are so poorly governed ourselves. We now have our own Irish nation building to do right from scratch, to renew, refresh, re-energize and rebuild Ireland in time for the clutch of centenaries that will soon fall due of the great events that first formed this nation.
Thank you very much.
