Seanad report: Feargal Quinn (Ind) said he approached with great scepticism any Government assessment of how the economy was currently performing.
It claimed that while our economic growth was lower than it had been in the Celtic Tiger years, everything was fine because that growth was still above the average in the EU as a whole.
This simplistic approach, which was driven by electoral considerations, masked a different underlying reality that must be acknowledged and tackled.
In the late 1990s, our growth had been driven by the output of our manufacturing and services industries, and this had been reflected in a corresponding growth in exports. The growth we had now was far less healthy and sustainable.
It was driven by two main factors, consumer spending and activity in the construction industry. Consumer spending was a bad horse to bet on unless it was underpinned by real added value.
If we went on spending while the amount we earned from the world economy was not growing at the same rate, we would soon find we were driving very fast up a cul-de-sac. The warnings in this area were the almost total absence of growth in the manufacturing sector and the virtual stagnancy of our exports. We would ignore these warnings at our peril.
The part of our growth based on construction was unhealthy and unsustainable, added Mr Quinn, who was speaking on the Government Estimates. "We must build houses and infrastructure, but we also need the activities in the world economy that will pay for what we spend in those areas."
Liam Fitzgerald (FF) said: "I believe his pessimism about the short term to long term potential of the Irish economy in terms of its transition from manufacturing to services and construction is unfounded or not fully justified. The economy has a strong base, which it did not have in the past."