At this stage we have [561] listened to the Taoiseach's opening contribution and to the contributions of four members of the Cabinet to this debate. They have structured their contributions in two parts, the first part seeks to devalue the concern being expressed nationally and in this Chamber as mere gossip or mischief, and in the second part of every contribution, they give a report on what they suggest is good, better or adequate management of their particular areas and the economy in general. However, there is nobody in this country, among the public or in any specialist role, who is in any doubt but that these two sets of events are inextricably linked, and they are linked as follows.
In recent times, particularly in the eighties, a culture of financial thinking and economic activity has grown in this country. For ease of reference that should be called a speculative culture. It differs from what was old fashioned in the Right, or in the traditional business sector of Irish economic history. It is not a culture of production; it is not about starting a factory; it is not about producing a commodity which is sold on the domestic market or abroad. The culture of speculation is about making money in an unaccountable fashion and, if possible, doing so in a way which will not yield one penny to the economy or to the revenues. The culture of production, on the other hand, might have caused the Labour Party and the parties of the Left traditionally to have arguments in relation to it but it made something, it was caught, if you like, within the economy.
Where the two sections of the speeches made by the Taoiseach and members of the Cabinet cannot be seen as easily divisible one from the other is that the Government and the parties of the Right are seen more and more as the political expression of a culture of speculation. There are many other elements attached to it. When people speak about a declaration of interest and so forth they are not talking about a person who might call [562] into a factory at election time and pick up a cheque. The fact is that the parties of the Right know that the old visits to the factory have given way to the nice, manila envelopes which arrive from the financial sector. The culture of speculation has been good to the Right in this House and it is because of the incredible dilatory and hopeless nature of financial journalism, economics and formal scholarship, that it has been unable to draw a distinction between a culture of speculation and a culture of production.
The culture of speculation created a certain kind of an lite in this country, a new class and, whether we like it or not, the Taoiseach, Deputy Haughey, is seen as part of the circle which goes around the golden circle. There is a group of lite drones who do not produce, who are proud of not paying their taxes and who are proud to serve - as they would put it - on semi-State bodies. We are supposed to set up an ochn after their leaving and wonder whether we will get their likes again to serve. They come to their positions at the board meetings with offshore registered companies.
When I was learning economics a long time ago, we were taught about the relationship of capital, labour and enterprise and about the distribution of wealth. I remember people in this House who were not anxious to do business with somebody who came waving an offshore tax dodge mechanism. Let me be blunt about it, I have some sympathy with the Taoiseach when he said pathetically that they were not all his friends, that some of them were friends of others. The Taoiseach said he was proud to have got someone to produce a boat to go round the world, of which we could all be proud. There is a querulousness and bad temper in the Taoiseach's speech which tells us a lot about his character. In the beginning, for example, he said in relation to the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition: "they have some audacity after the way they devastated the Irish economy and our public finances even to participate in this debate".
Later in his speech the Taoiseach referred to Deputy Rabbitte as the [563] anchor man of RTE. I am glad the Minister for Justice is present as he is closely associated with vindictive attacks on public broadcasting and on RTE. It is an insult to RTE - and to Deputy Rabbitte - to refer to him as an anchor man of RTE. The Taoiseach is really saying he does not like Deputy Rabbitte being interviewed again and again about matters that discomfit the Taoiseach. Why does he not have the courage to say so? Of course what we will see are the side-shafts thrown into RTE through the Broadcasting Bill.
A seedy group of people, who are not associated with producing or selling anything, constituted themselves as a new group. Through the adulation of certain sections of the public who, in the absence of a royal family, wanted to know who was spending 1,000 on a meal, wasting their money and behaving in a fashion that would have put Caligula to shame, this class were uncomfortably around the Government. There is no point in the Taoiseach saying he has not spoken to them lately and that he met them only casually. What were the consequences of putting our trust in that kind of person, in such a group of people? What were the consequences for the country?
The public were told that these people have a genius for making money. They play golf which costs several thousand pounds per hour and the public thought that because they could do that they might be able to do it for everyone. That is dangerous nonsense. They engage in speculation, evasion of taxes and are not ashamed of enjoying wealth which has not been produced. That is the type who were glorified and the result has been the present economic difficulties. The public are now asking questions and I ask them to think long and hard about the matter.
When the Mitterrand Government were elected in France a propaganda point was made that international financial business communities would lose confidence in France. Did the threat to financial propriety and to economic management come in this country from the Left? The Taoiseach made an arrogant [564] point in his speech when he talked about "stuff that comes from what is called the Left". However, the public would love to know what the Taoiseach calls himself. We know that the people he will not disown are the people who have dragged this country's financial and economic reputation into the gutter. The questions must be answered. People who need jobs want a sensible and rational economic approach, they do not want this nonsense that is trotted out insultingly at the beginning of every Dil term. There is talk about creating an economic environment, a climate for investment and that the jobs will automatically come.
I remember being mocked in this House when I said that you could have economic growth, a low interest rate, good trade figures, a good balance of payment figures and still have an absence of investment which gave the required jobs. I spoke bluntly about the difference between market economies that regard the social results as a residuum of market forces and of social economy drawn from the old-fashioned version of political economy in which the economy was used as an instrument to pursue job creation based on international traded commodities. There was an ideological opposition to such a view and now the public might well ask if it would not have been better to have had confidence in people like their sons and daughters who worked in the State and semi-State sectors. Would it not have been better to have capitalised the semi-State sector properly instead of taking people from the speculative end of financial services and planking them on the semi-State bodies? I mean bringing the capital side of the semi-State bodies into correctness and enabling them, because of their scale - they could hire marketing, research and development - to trade abroad. That strategy was available to us.
What was the role of the credit institutions in all this? How moral and serious a commitment have they to anything in this country as they report losses made outside this economy? It would appear that when you put up rather dubious [565] loans you can turn to the credit institutions and get money; effectively, to go to the races for a short term scam.
At the same time the doors of factories are being closed, workers are losing their jobs and owners of small businesses have to sign in blood for small loans.
Something good must come from what we are debating, and whether one is of the Left or the Right that is important. It is important that we recognise that the culture of speculative gambling in economic terms is not productive and is not in the national interest. It will never create jobs. It is time that some people realised that their deadly anti-State ideology and their blindness in asserting that we must take people from the most dubious kind of fiscal activities in the private sector and move them to the State sector is a prejudiced nonsense.
Bord Telecom are a marvellous company, even on a world scale, because we borrowed money in the seventies to invest in the telephone system. That belongs to the public; why should it be stolen from them. It is not something of wires and exchanges that had magic worked upon it by one individual. That is the kind of nonsense we have had to put up with, people saying that they performed miracles like striking rocks when describing their performance in the semi-State sector. There was a public investment in this company. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are proud to work honestly and give of their intelligence in using the capital being provided by the Irish taxpayer. There are more than one million, I am sure, who despise those who will not work or create wealth, who do not want what they do to create jobs for their fellow citizens but want to take their little bit of gain, put it in a company outside this jurisdiction and avoid paying tax. The people are weary of the kind of moral turpitude that is at the basis of our present economic structures. They hear such a phrase as "a mezzanine company", that lovely piece of language, which means yet another intermediate device to avoid the obligation of paying tax of one form or another.
[566] The crowds came out against a wealth tax, which was very small here, one of the smallest in Europe. It yielded very little but it yielded information on the structure and nature of wealth. That was information we badly needed. It was not intended to take something from people that was unreasonable; it was simply to distinguish between productive wealth and speculative wealth. If we knew what was productive wealth we would have a better idea of how to structure an economic incentive system that would extend its productive capacity, create jobs and, in turn, create revenue. It was of course the people who were making the quick speculative money who were able to organise political opposition to the wealth tax. That was killed off not for what it yielded in its very short time but for what it was making known. This present crisis is a crisis of that kind of thinking. I advise those who are fortunate enough to be able to make academic commentaries on the way we run things to think of this distinction.
When I was studying economics, when one looked at the share quotation of a company, it had something to do with its assets, its materials, its trading patterns, its future policies--

I have not had an opportunity of saying much about other matters. I am simply saying one cannot break one's speech into two to say: "These are all rumours and I am now going to talk about what my Department are doing". That is pathetic. The way a Department is run is affected by the kind of Government we have, and that is affected by the kind of political culture we support. I could have been specific about my area, the Gaeltacht. What has the Minister for the Gaeltacht done to encourage my confidence, be it in terms of Telefs na Gaeltachta, labhairt na Gaeilge or school textbooks in Irish? I could have spoken about foreign affairs. What [567] has been done in that area? There has been a pathetic retreat from a moral responsibility at a time of death in Africa. The Government have retreated from their overseas development aid commitments. They have insulted the House in terms of a foreign affairs committee. It would be wrong to say that this gives one pleasure, but it is certainly appropriate that this House expresses its lack of confidence in the Government.

