Focus on costs to prepare for recovery, says Lenihan

THE GOVERNMENT'S main economic focus must be the restoration of international cost competitiveness, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan told the Dáil.

"It is imperative that we are in a position to take advantage of the global recovery when it emerges," he added. "Maintaining public capital investment at high levels relative to national income, boosting productivity and ensuring credibility and sustainability in the public finances will all be helpful in this regard." Mr Lenihan was speaking during the debate on the Finance Bill.

Fine Gael spokesman Richard Bruton said the problem with the Bill was that it came out of the same stable as the flawed Budget.

"As a result of the failure to address fundamental reform, we now stand almost alone among western countries in seeking to address the international crisis by raising taxes and cutting our investment," he added.

"The EU, in its new strategy, is looking to precisely the opposite approach, believing that now is the time for member states to introduce an economic stimulus."

Mr Bruton said that Ireland could have provided such a stimulus if there had been serious public service reform, and if we were not in the position where more than one-third of borrowing was invested in paying day-to-day costs. Labour spokeswoman Joan Burton claimed that with the Bill, the "boomerang Budget" had descended into farce.

"When this Government was asked to step up to the plate with a programme for economic recovery, it struck out," she added.

"We are told that an economic plan is on the way. Before the Finance Bill is even debated, this is a stark admission of its inadequacy." The truth, said Ms Burton, was that the Bill would do nothing to get the economy back on track.

"The Government is going back to the drawing board in the hope that it would be third-time lucky," she added. Ms Burton said that at the very time when the economy needed a fiscal stimulus, the Government was hamstrung by its past profligacy.

She said that borrowing to boost the economy in the short-term, by investing in education and infrastructure, would help Ireland grow the economy and balance the books. Sinn Féin spokesman Arthur Morgan claimed that the Bill abandoned the working families who drove the economy through the Celtic Tiger years.

"It represents depressing evidence of a Government continuing to sleepwalk through a crisis that is threatening not just the banking system or the construction sector, but is slowly bleeding the small businesses that employ most Irish workers and which is the heart of the Irish economy," he added.