COWEN'S RESPONSE:TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen urged people to face the future with "renewed fortitude and courage", saying Ireland needs a "major national effort" to get through the recession.
Speaking in Co Offaly yesterday, Mr Cowen said “every recession provides the opportunity for a restructuring of our economy and that is what we have to do today”.
This would involve painful decisions in the short term, he said.
“The purpose of all that is, of course, to adapt to the new circumstances. As business has to do, so must public administration, and in doing that we will provide the most effective response we can for the hard-pressed taxpayer, but also, of course, to prepare ourselves and put ourselves in the position to forge ahead again as we will when this recessions lifts,” said Mr Cowen.
“I’ll ask everyone to recognise that a major national effort is involved in this process, and I know that we can count on the people of this area, and indeed throughout the country, that we will rise to that challenge.”
He was speaking at the opening of a new €80 million business campus at Edenderry. Earlier, Mr Cowen said no area of public expenditure was immune from consideration, including social welfare payments.
Commenting on the abstention of the two Green Party Senators in a vote on the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill last Tuesday night, he said: “I’d like to think that it would be a very isolated incident.”
Mr Cowen said everyone should “critically and carefully” read the report. It had indicated the scale of the challenge facing the country and he stressed that, “this is a challenge that the country as a whole has to face”.
Speaking to reporters in Dublin yesterday morning, at an Ógra Fianna Fáil function launching a “holiday at home” campaign, he said the wider interests of the country and not sectional interests should be the primary consideration.
“It can’t be just about defending one’s individual patch, it’s about looking at the process in the round and seeing what’s in the interests of the country at this time.”
When it was put to him that the proposal for a 5 per cent cut in social welfare rates was politically unsustainable, Mr Cowen replied: “We have to look at all of these issues. The scale of the issues is such that no area of expenditure is immune from consideration.
“We have seen a lot of improvements, and quite rightly so, in a whole range of social policy areas down the years, but you can’t begin this process given the scale of the problem we face by starting to suggest that various parts of expenditure can’t be considered for review or for adjustment. You have to look at everything . . . I think all of us have to avoid any knee-jerk reaction to the report and just recognise that the quicker we get our public finances in order, as we know from recent economic history, the quicker we can put ourselves in a position to get back to growth and jobs again.”
When he was asked if redundancies in the public service were inevitable, the Taoiseach answered: “One of the ways of controlling public service pay and pensions is through the numbers who are employed, and that is a method that has been adopted in the past as we tried to deal with the current situation.”
As to the proposal to dismantle the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, he said: “The question of how we organise Government or deliver services is a matter for Government decision in due course.”
Asked if he was concerned about the abstention of Green Party Senators Dan Boyle and Deirdre de Búrca on the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill, he said: “Well I think it’s important, obviously, to ensure that legislation adopted by Government under the doctrine of collective responsibility is maintained and enacted and that happened in this case. I’d like to think that it would be a very isolated incident.”
Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív yesterday refused to be drawn on proposals to abolish his department and insisted the report was simply “a general menu” from which the Government would implement changes.
Mr Ó Cuív strongly rejected any suggestion that the report constitutes an attack on the Irish language and Gaeltacht communities.