LEADER'S SPEECH:The following is an edited version of Eamon Gilmore's address to the Labour Party conference.
IN THIS job, as leader of the Labour Party, I get lots of occasions to talk, but what I like best are the opportunities I get to listen.
To hear the stories, the life experiences and the worries of people all over this great country.
Like, the businessman in Galway who told me how his business has folded. That everything is now gone, and the humiliation he felt queuing for welfare for the first time ever.
The young solicitor from Limerick, who had come first in her law class in university, who has just been let go from the practice where she had worked for the past three years.
The bricklayer from Ballybrack in my own constituency, now out of work, who would love to get the chance to lay the blocks for the badly needed clubhouse where he trains a boys’ football team every Saturday.
This recession is not just a political or an economic event. It is a horrible human experience.
Over and over again, I hear three basic questions.
How bad is this recession? How long will it last? And can we get out of it? The answers are not easy. This recession is bad. The worst we have ever seen. There is no precedent for it. Because this is the first global crisis in global capitalism, and it comes on top of economic mismanagement at home. There has never been an economic crisis like this.
It is like a new virus for which the scientists are still researching the vaccine.
We all hope that the Obama stimulus package will work. And I hope too that Ben Bernanke is right when he says it will bottom out next year.
But we can’t be sure. And anyway, Ireland is going to take even longer to recover.
But recover we will.
This is not Armageddon, and we need not panic.
Does Labour have a plan to deal with it? Yes, we do, but it won’t be easy. There is no quick fix. This is an economic emergency and, as a country, we will now have to take measures that we would not normally contemplate. We all know that will be painful, but we also know it will be bearable, if we all share the burden. And if we can see where we are going to end up.
The first thing we need therefore, is a sense of national direction. To know what kind of future we are trying to build out of these bad economic times. To know that if we can endure the pain, we will be restored to full economic health again.
Some weeks ago the Taoiseach made a speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce that got a lot of coverage and praise. There was a lot in that speech that I agree with because, for once, he talked about the importance of jobs.
But there was something else he said with which I profoundly disagree. It was this.
He said that the future for the next generation, for our children, will not be as good as it has been for us.
That is defeatist talk. If that is the Government’s starting point for recovery, then they are already beaten.
I believe that the future can and will be better for our children.
Labour is not for going back. No rescue for the cabal of cowboys and charlatans who got us into this mess. No restoration of the status quo.
What makes Labour’s economic policy different can be summed up in a single four-letter word: jobs.
Since the last general election, less than two years ago, over 200,000 people have lost their jobs. Every lost job costs at least €20,000 between social welfare payments and lost taxes. That’s four billion every year! The Taoiseach has admitted to me in the Dáil that unemployment could go to over 450,000 by the end of this year. That’s another two billion! That’s the problem in the public finances. The cost of job losses and the taxes lost because people are no longer spending.
The problem in the public finances was caused by the downturn in the economy, not the other way around.
Difficult decisions will have to be taken on taxation and spending, but the public finances can only be restored to order by getting people back to work. By restoring consumer confidence, and by getting the economy moving again.
We are not going to solve the economic crisis unless we put jobs at the heart of everything we do. That is why Labour has been putting forward proposal after proposal, to save jobs, to create new jobs and to re-stimulate our economy.
We must do everything we can to support job creation. In these exceptional times, employers’ PRSI should be cut for at least 18 months, where a new job is created and filled by someone who has been unemployed.
In less than two weeks the Government will introduce the second budget and their fourth attempt to stabilise the public finances for 2009. The Labour Party offered to fully engage and to be positive, and I regret that the Government decided to be evasive and partisan and to keep the key budget information to themselves.
What we need is a plan for the public finances, not just another set of panic measures. We need a budget that is part of a coherent three-year National Recovery Plan.
You cannot close the gap between income and expenditure in one year alone. Too much harsh medicine all at once could end up killing the patient. Sending the country further into a downward spiral of job losses, followed by cuts, followed by more jobs losses, followed by more cuts.
Do taxes have to increase? Yes, they do. They are increasing already and are going to have to increase more. Nobody likes that, but there is no choice – that is where Fianna Fáil has brought us. The gap cannot be sustained.
We will publish our pre-budget statement next week, and our tax proposals will include a third rate of income tax for the highest earners.
But when we pay more tax, and deep down we all know we have to, then it must be progressive and on the taxpayers’ terms. The Government must end, in this budget, the practice and status of tax exiles.
You couldn’t make it up. Sell the company, split it three ways, then send the three spouses off to Italy for 183 days, so they qualify as tax exiles and you can avoid paying the capital gains tax. That game is up now. If working people have to pay more tax, then everybody is paying tax. And that goes too for the tax reliefs on property and on director’s pensions.
We will only get out of this mess, if we work together, as one Ireland.
Not by scapegoating nurses, teachers and gardaí, or by targeting vulnerable groups like special needs children.
But by insisting on better value for money in public services and having clear bottom lines.
That means that no one who makes an honest effort to pay their mortgage should lose their home.
That means that €16 million is a small price to pay to vaccinate teenage girls against cervical cancer.
That means now is not the time for cuts in education. Labour would reverse the cuts in special needs classes. Reinstate the school book grants for our schools. Lift the cap on Post Leaving Cert Courses and keep universal access to third-level education.
There has to be sacrifice, yes, but terms and conditions apply. The time has come for fundamental reform. Twice in a generation, Fianna Fáil has brought this country to the edge of disaster. Twice too often. It is now time to say ‘Never again’.
This time 10 years ago, I brought to a Labour conference a report on housing prepared by Professor PJ Drudy of Trinity College. It warned that the rapid rise in house prices was unsustainable, that land speculation was wrong and should be ended and that increased levels of borrowing should lead to economic grief.
But Fianna Fáil would not listen, and for the decade since they have nurtured the culture of crony capitalism which has now sunk the hopes and aspirations of a generation.
It was a perfect circle, where their friends in the know speculated on land, their councillors rezoned it, their friends in the banks gave them loans to finance it, the Government gave them tax reliefs on it, and the working people who paid for all this with excessive mortgages are now going to have to pay for it all over again – now that it has come crashing down.
Labour’s mission is to replace that kind of crony capitalism with a “merit society” – where we reward people for hard work and genuine risk, not sharp dealing and insider trading.
Where we break up the cosy club of cross-directorships, where you sit on my board and I chair yours.
Where we clean out the banks, by having the State take a controlling interest – a majority shareholding.
But to end crony capitalism, you have to end crony politics.
It is not enough to dismantle the Galway tent – we have to break up the cosy cartel that sheltered under its roof.
That is the political choice which every man and woman in this State can make on June 5th, when we all go out to vote in the local and European elections.
The best way to end developer-led planning is to elect more Labour members to our councils, because we can be proud of Labour’s record of integrity in local government. Because we can look any voter in the eye and assure them that Labour representatives serve no interest but the public interest.
June 5th is important because it gives every adult in this country an opportunity to make a statement which is stronger and louder than any protest. An opportunity not just to vote in protest against a bad Government, but to call for a fresh start and a new future by voting for the Labour Party.
To get out of this recession.
To do it together.
To build a new, better and fairer Ireland.
To meet the challenges of our times as one Ireland, and to remain one Ireland.
It is the time for one Ireland. This is the time for Labour.