My basic point in introducing my observations on this Bill was that if we adopted the correct economic and social strategy in our budgetary and general economic policy we could ensure our future development. This year and again next year there will be an additional 15,000 people seeking employment. We are a rich country in terms of agricultural land, our seas and our mineral, oil and gas resources and if we exploit these resources properly we should be able to sustain our economic and industrial development. We built up during the sixties a strong industrial sector and a sustained export record. I am convinced that if we extend that industrial sector and improve exports we can provide good jobs at reasonable earning levels for all our people. For that reason I am not pessimistic in my approach to this Bill. In general I am optimistic but if there is one area about which I am pessimistic it is the inability of political parties to get to grips with the need for courageous policies. There is a great deal of progress to be made towards the development of our economy on a rational basis.
I have stated many times in this House and elsewhere that there are no soft options open to us in economic and social development. Anybody who suggests that we can simultaneously increase Government expenditure for job creation, job maintenance and the expansion of social programmes and also reduce direct or indirect taxation is simply codding people. An attempt to do such things would wreck the economy. We need a sustained period of very careful management of the State finances and we also need an economic and social plan which will not be messed about by party political programmes. We need, too, a national planning board to advise politicians on the best strategies to adopt. We need an understanding in regard to income increases and very definite agreement between the social partners and the Government on all these matters. Unless we adopt that approach we will simply go along from budget to budget chopping and changing, making promises, half implementing them and borrowing money for political expediency, funding projects which are half baked and half defined and ending up in the mess we experienced in 1980 and 1981. We are at a watershed in terms of budgetary policy.
I hope that those who have some responsibility for examining the strategy will learn some unpalatable lessons from what happened during the term of the former Taoiseach and the former Minister for Finance. If I have been bitter and scathing in my reaction to the policies they followed it is because, despite the former Taoiseach's indication on assuming office that he would take some hard options, he reversed that course immediately for transient political popularity. Nothing was beyond the greatest toucher of all times in seeking money for any project. The money was made available but there was not a taxation policy to pay for that kind of expenditure. That is not good enough.