The decision to exit the EU-IMF programme without seeking an additional credit line was significant and should have been discussed at greater length in the Dáil at the time. We need to be clear as to the reasons it was significant. The media hailed it as a gamble and a bold move. While some considered it reckless, others viewed it as an achievement and an end to our humiliation. All sorts of hyperbole and comments appeared in the media and some excitable Deputies contributed to this climate of excitement in their own way. In all the descriptions of the decision I read, the word "opportunity", which I felt fitted best, was rarely used. There is an opportunity for a change of direction and to take a new approach that will ease the burden on hard-pressed, ordinary citizens. Our exit from the programme will mean nothing if it does not get people back on their feet, ease the hardship many are suffering and give back people a sense of dignity.
Many on the Government benches will slap themselves on the back in delight and hail our exit from the bailout as mission accomplished. That is far from the case. The past few years have been very difficult and challenging for people. None of us will forget the events of late 2010 and early 2011 when every day seemed to bring a fresh disaster or fiasco and no level of incompetence seemed too great. At official level, denial seemed to be the order of the day and even Ministers seemed to have been kept in the dark. The sense of anger and humiliation felt by citizens, particularly younger people, on hearing that the European Union and International Monetary Fund were coming to town will never leave them. No one will forget what the country endured under the Fianna Fail-Green Party Government.
The Government likes to point to those days and blame all our current woes, difficulties and budgetary challenges on Fianna Fáil. While there is no doubt the previous Government was responsible, that does not excuse what has taken place under this Government. Fianna Fáil is a convenient scapegoat given that all the pain people have suffered in recent years under the bailout took place on this Government's watch and this pain will be forever associated with it.
Domestically and internationally, an attempt has been made to make the case that the programme has been extremely successful. According to many commentators, Ireland is top of the class and a poster boy for austerity. It is a shame they do not look more closely at what occurred in this State in the past three years. What was the purpose of the targets set by the IMF and ECB? It was to ensure Ireland did enough to service its debts. The ECB and IMF were not interested in anything other than achieving that objective and certainly not interested in how it was achieved. While the basic targets may have been met, little attention has been paid to other targets and objectives, which have not been reached. Unemployment, at 13.2%, remains very high and far above the European average. Nearly 400,000 people are still unemployed and the true figure is probably masked by persons in training and so forth. The unemployment rate is particularly high among young people, an issue that will be discussed in detail when Sinn Féin's Private Members' motion is debated tonight.
The Government has effectively sacrificed a generation of young people. According to the Central Statistics Office, the youth unemployment rate stands at 29.6%. When one adds to the official figure the percentage of young people who are on various schemes, one arrives at a much higher figure. The number of young people employed in the economy has declined by 18,000 since the Government came to power. Ireland continues to have the second worst long-term unemployment figures in the European Union. Again, young people are worst affected, with figures showing that 61.7% of unemployed young people have been without work for one year or more compared to an EU average of 44.6%. Despite these figures, the IMF did not set any targets for addressing unemployment because it was not interested in the issue.
On emigration, people are flowing out of the country at a rate without equal since the Famine. While some recent emigrants wanted to travel, many more did not and those on the benches opposite who believe otherwise are fooling themselves. That no targets were set to address emigration is indicative of the interest the IMF showed in addressing the issue.
Targets were not set in respect of maintaining decent public services either. The public health system is facing cutbacks on a scale it will struggle to absorb. It has reached the point at which the chief executives of some of the main hospitals have written to the Minister to express fear about the consequences of budget cuts for cancer services in their hospitals. Medical cards are also being withdrawn.
The assault local government has absorbed has been such that bewildered county and city councillors scarcely know how to respond to it or to continue to provide services. Roads are deteriorating and housing lists lengthening. The programme did not set a target to keep poverty below a certain threshold. Every year since the recession began, the number of people at risk of poverty or in consistent poverty has risen. None of these issues featured in the targets because the IMF and ECB were simply not interested and did not mind how we found the money, provided it was found.
Two points need to be made. The first, to which I will return presently, is that a substantial portion of the debts we are expected to pay do not belong to us in the first place. The second is that the Government, as opposed to the IMF, ECB, EU or Fianna Fáil, had responsibility for deciding how to close the deficit and cannot, therefore, obscure the harm it has done simply by referring to targets.
Nobody believes its task was easy, but closing the deficit could have been done in a much fairer way that would have led to more sustainable economic growth and less unemployment and suffering. The Government should have sought to invest in jobs rather than cut away at public pay and at social welfare payments, which makes no sense economically, as that is money that is spent in the real economy in local shops. This is the part of the economy that is still sluggish. The high street is still lagging behind, and it is because ordinary people do not have the money to spend on anything other than the absolute basics and essentials.
Investment in a stimulus of the kind that Sinn Féin has advocated and detailed over numerous pre-budget submissions would have stemmed the flow of emigration and created employment. However, the Government was not interested because, while it was happy tackling the weak on their social protection and pay, it was not satisfied to go after the powerful and vested interests, taxing wealth and raising finance from those most able to pay. We may be exiting the programme - that is welcome, and it is positive that the Government is not going for a second programme - but the social cost of the way the Government has chosen to deal with the programme has been enormous.
The Government has still made no progress on our legacy debts. Its strategy of meek acceptance, and not raising the issue, has clearly not worked. We still have an unmanageable debt burden, which will hamper economic growth for a generation.
At the EU summit in June last, the Government attempted to claim that it was a game-changer and that the European Stability Mechanism would reduce banking debt and separate banking debt from sovereign debt. This has not happened, and the international markets will charge us yields on our borrowing based on the significant bank debt. What is more, we will still be under EU surveillance until we have repaid 75% of our debt and will be in any case subject to the fiscal compact.
The decision not to apply for a credit line is a positive move by the Government. However, it will count for little if the Government does not seize the opportunity. Surely it must be time for an easing-up on austerity to begin investment to get Ireland back to work. If the Government continues with its troika-era policies, this will be looked upon as no more than a footnote.
