DÁIL SKETCH:Opposition criticism regarding the jobs initiative exasperated the Minister for Finance

MINISTER FOR Finance Michael Noonan had some advice for the Opposition yesterday.

“You are not going to last on negativity alone,” he declared.

“There comes the point where you have to be positive . . . you will have to say what you want to do rather than what you are against.” The Opposition, not surprisingly, seemed unimpressed.

Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins remarked: “Minister, as we know, tragically, there are 440,000 people unemployed.” Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath said he was sure the Government’s jobs initiative exempted people such as Michael Fingleton, “with his €27 million pension fund”.

The Minister evoked the “old days in Romania where you could say that we are creating 50,000 jobs”. The Government, he said, was saying it could not create very many jobs directly, but what it had to do was build up confidence and take the economy sector by sector, and introduce initiatives which would allow the private sector to create jobs.

There was a very simple decision: “Does one do something or does one do nothing?” All in the House agreed the jobs crisis was getting worse and needed focused action, he said. “The previous government decided to do nothing,” he added. “We have decided to do something, which is the basis for this initiative.” Opposition criticism clearly exasperated the Minister. “Look, can anybody name for me a tax that is universally popular? And can anybody tell me that the jobs are not a crisis problem in Irish society at present?” he said.

As he was heckled from the Opposition benches, he added: “I can’t answer, if you keep interrupting, you know”. He told the Opposition: “In circumstances where somebody on €80 a week is expected to pay the universal social charge because of the times we are in, and the difficulties we are in, it is reasonable, in my view, to ask pension funds to pay 0.6 per cent for four years on a temporary basis.

“That is all that is being asked, and it is a very small imposition when you compare it with the huge generosity of successive administrations to the pensions industry in providing relief at the marginal rate of tax.”

Earlier, on the Order of Business, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore was in tetchy humour.

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald spoke of the need to protect the interests of distressed debtors and mortgage holders.

She urged Gilmore to give a commitment to the Dáil that the necessary legislation would be published with the haste required. The Tánaiste replied the Government regarded the issue of distressed mortgage holders as a matter of great urgency.

“A personal insolvency Bill is planned for 2012 and is in the course of being developed in the Department of Justice and Equality to provide for a new framework for settlement and enforcement of debt, and for personal insolvency,” he replied.

When McDonald pressed the issue, he said that “if the deputy had listened to the reply instead of having predetermined what the answer was going to be, she would have heard me say very clearly that the personal insolvency Bill is planned for 2012”.

Heaven forbid that any Opposition TD would have a predetermined response to what a Minister might say!