Here are a few extracts from the responses by
Richard Bruton to every
budget speech delivered by Brian Cowen as Minister for Finance. There is plenty of other stuff in the speeches about public sector reform and general waste. But the theme i'm highlighting here is competitiveness, the export industry, the very foundations the Celtic Tiger (1987-2001) was built on, and the impact of the construction bubble.
Budget 2005
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Richard Bruton
There is a worrying complacency in Government about the enterprise sector. Few people realise that in the past four years, employment in the exposed sector of our economy has been in sharp decline. The rate of job losses has been more than double that of the mid-90s.
We are facing a tough time in export markets. Since May 2002, export prices have fallen by 15%. Companies trading and competing have had to tighten their costs by 15% but the utilities, stealth taxes, rates and all the other burdens the State puts on those companies have increased by 27%. There is no tightening of belts when it comes to those delivering those services but the companies which have to compete in export markets are feeling the squeeze. Companies are leaving these shores to go to cheaper environments.
Parliamentary Debates (Official Report - Unrevised) Dáil Éireann Wednesday, 1 December 2004 - Page 4
Budget 2006
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Richard Bruton
We need to examine what needs to be done to proof ourselves against changing and hardening external environments. No one can have illusions about the change that has happened in the external environment in which Ireland seeks to compete. There is a sharp contrast between the economy Deputy Quinn handed over to Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats in 1997 and the economy the Minister will soon hand back to the rainbow coalition. Superficially, there are many similarities. Employment is increasing rapidly and the budget surplus is healthy, but there are also signs of fragility which cannot be ignored. Approximately 40% of jobs in companies supported by the industrial agencies has been lost since 2000. Many have been replaced but not enough to prevent a sharp decline. Ireland has lost share in its export markets three years in a row. Our export performance is at its worst since 1974 and it is less than a quarter of what is was in the late 1990s.
The problem is that while the construction sector can absorb people and conceal problems in underlying trading sectors, that cannot go on forever. As a small, open economy, we need to survive on the basis of competitive businesses and that is not happening. Ireland’s enterprise strategy was once the envy of emerging countries but it is feeling the strain and the cracks are showing.
Parliamentary Debates (Official Report - Unrevised) Dáil Éireann Wednesday, 7 December 2005 - Page 4
Budget 2007
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Richard Bruton
The Government is increasing spending at a rate 50% faster than the growth of national income. Taxes are rising as a result. This year, the Government is continuing the trend by budgeting to increase spending by 11.5%. To put this in perspective, an ordinary worker will be lucky to obtain an increase of4%. The surplus has been cut back at a time when the economy is experiencing pressure on the prices front and when SSIAs are coming on stream. Spending is increasing far faster than national income and tax revenues and this is posing a threat. Many commentators warned the Government about inflation before the budget was put together and I believe they will now be of the opinion that we are on dangerous ground.
The Government has doubled its dependence on the construction sector to support its revenue. A total of 25% of every tax euro spent by the Government comes from the construction sector. We are not in a strong position; we are, in fact, in a vulnerable position.
The real question is whether the Government has done enough to build the capability of the economy to withstand the real pressures under which it is about to come. Those pressures do not merely revolve around the possible slowdown in the housing market; they relate to the relentless march of competition that is coming our way. Our competitiveness has declined in each of the past five years. In the same period, our share of export markets and the level of manufacturing employment have fallen. Some 50% of the jobs that existed in IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland industries five years ago have disappeared.
Parliamentary Debates (Official Report - Unrevised) Dáil Éireann Wednesday, 6 December 2006 - Page 1
Budget 2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Richard Bruton
I give the Minister one cheer for some reform of stamp duty but I do not endorse his housing strategy that is failing so many people. Even the Central Bank, hardly the source of radical thinking, tells us that half the people in the country cannot afford to buy a house and that this is unsustainable. The tragedy is that the bill for high cost Government has come home to roost, not just for taxpayers but for those trying to compete in the real economy.
The Government and its policies accounted for half of all inflation during the past seven years. In addition, it loaded stealth taxes equivalent to €3,500 per annum onto every family. Inflation in sectors controlled by the Government is running at two and a half times the rate that obtains in equivalent sectors in other eurozone countries. Ireland has become a high-cost country primarily as a result of Government action. I will provide one statistic which, more than any other, illustrates this fact. Price increases in sectors controlled by Government during the past seven years stand at 45%. Manufacturing companies trying to export goods abroad — the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Martin, will be aware of this — have seen their prices fall by 17%. That is the contrast.
Parliamentary Debates (Official Report - Unrevised) Dáil Éireann Wednesday, 5 December 2007 - Page 3
There have been many exercises in revisionism by this government in recent times claiming that the opposition were just as bad as the government if not worse (as Willie O’Dea suggested this week). They claim that nobody saw it coming, or that the opposition never told them to stop, or that the problems are all down to external factors etc…
These extracts show that the alternative Minister for Finance was very much on the ball with his warnings about the economy. He outlined clearly why we were on the wrong track. He warned consistently and relentlessly about the erosion of competitiveness, how this erosion caused the export sector in this country to go into decline and how this decline was masked by a property boom. This is the problem we face today in a nutshell. This economically illiterate government complacently believed that the fundamentals were sound when they so obviously weren't.
Richard Bruton saw it coming a mile out but they weren't interested.
Government people often desperately cite the opposition’s election manifestos from the last 2 elections as “proof” that they would have overspent and mismanaged the public finances as much as the government. But as I have stated before on this site, since the 1970s, manifestos in Ireland have become completely discredited. They are merely electioneering tools that, unfortunately, a large portion of our electorate has come to expect. But they are not an indication of how a government will govern on a day to day basis, or the judgment ministers will exercise when making decisions.
The only thing we really have to go by is the past records of the personnel when they were in government, the policy traditions within their parties or, as above, the various clues that give us a vital insight in somebody's way of thinking and show that that that somebody really does know what he’s talking about. Whatever your opinion of the man, it is clear that he at least possessed a most basic economic literacy that this government so sorely lacked.