The following is the full text of Labour party leader Eamon Gilmore's speech to the party's annual conference in Mullingar this evening.
In this job, as Leader of the Labour Party, I get lots of occasions to talk, but what I like best are the opportunities I get to listen.
To hear the stories, the life experiences and the worries of people all over this great country.
Like, the businessman in Galway who told me how his business has folded. That everything is now gone, and the humiliation he felt queuing for welfare for the first time ever.
The young solicitor from Limerick, who had come first in her Law class at university - who has just been let go from the practice where she had worked for the past three years.
The bricklayer from Ballybrack in my own constituency, now out of work - who would love to get the chance to lay the blocks for the badly needed clubhouse where he trains a boys’ football team every Saturday morning.
These are the human stories of this recession.
Of aspiration turned to apprehension.
Ambition to Fear.
Hope to Frustration.
This recession is not just a political or an economic event. It is a horrible human experience.
I trace its path - not by the coloured lines of an economist’s graph, but along the strained lines on the faces of those who have lost their jobs.
I read about it, not just in newspaper commentaries, but in the hand-written letters, and the personal emails that I get every day and which cry out for help.
Yes, people are angry. Angry at a Government that lined the pockets of a few, and has now left the rest of us to rescue the future. Angry that, for the second time in a generation, our country has been brought to the edge of an economic cliff, by sheer naked greed. Angry, that this great country, of which we are all proud, should find its reputation so badly damaged abroad.
The anger is understandable and justified, but we must harness it. Focus it on economic recovery, on the solutions which are necessary. The actions that are needed to deal with this emergency.
Over and over again, I hear three basic questions.
How bad is this recession?
How long will it last?
Can we get out of it?
The answers are not easy. This recession is bad. The worst we have ever seen. There is no precedent for it. Because this is the first global crisis in global capitalism, and it comes on top of economic mis-management at home. There has never been an economic crisis like this. It is like a new virus for which the scientists are still researching the vaccine.
We all hope that the Obama stimulus package will work. And I hope too that Ben Bernanke is right when he says it will bottom out next year. But we can’t be sure. And anyway, Ireland is going to take even longer to recover.
But recover we will.
This is not Armageddon, and we need not panic.
Because every episode like this in the economic and political history of humankind has always come to an end. Because, as a country, we have great natural and human resources. And because we Irish are resilient and creative and we will not be defeated by the mistakes of the past or the greed of the few.
The Celtic Tiger was not built on a mirage. The economy that Ruairi Quinn handed on was thriving and competitive, and it can be again.
Does Labour have a plan to deal with it? Yes, we do, but it won’t be easy. There is no quick fix. This is an economic emergency, and as a country, we will now have to take measures that we would not normally contemplate.
We all know that that will be painful, but we also know it will be bearable, if we all share the burden. And if we can see where we are going to end up.
The first thing we need therefore, is a sense of national direction. To know that kind of future we are trying to build out of these bad economic times. To know that if we can endure the pain, we will be restored to full economic health again.
Some weeks ago the Taoiseach made a speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce that got a lot of coverage and praise. There was a lot in that speech that I agree with, because, for once, he talked about the importance of jobs.
But there was something else he said with which I profoundly disagree. It was this. He said that the future for the next generation, for our children, will not be as good as it has been for us.
That is defeatist talk.
If that is the Government’s starting point for recovery, then they are already beaten.I believe that the future can and will be better for our children. But better, not just measured by material things, but by the quality of their lives and the reach of their aspirations.
A future where the things that really matter are not the size of your car, or the label on the back of your jeans. But whether your sick parent can get treated in a safe hospital, your child can be well taught in a classroom that is comfortable and safe, the water is safe to drink and the environment is conserved for the next generations. Where we place more stock on the values of neighbourhood and solidarity than on the price of consumer goods.
Out of this recession can come great good. A country with a growing prosperous economy again, but where economic activity is primarily to serve the needs of people, and where people are no longer slaves of the market. A new deal and a fair deal for the people who work hard and play by the rules.
This is now all about building a New Future. Not re-inventing the past.
Labour is not for going back. No rescue for the cabal of cowboys and charlatans who got us into this mess. No restoration of the status quo.
The old ways are over. All over the world, the old economic order is failing. The challenge is to carve a new and better future from the ruins of the past. This is a mission which requires new progressive political leadership, which I hope is now coming from the Democrats in the United States, which will come from Labour in Ireland and from our sister parties in Europe.
The kind of leadership that dares to see it and to say it differently: which refuses to be bound by the failed conventions of those who led us here.
And what makes Labour’s economic policy different can be summed up in a single four letter word: JOBS.
Since the last general election, less than 2 years ago, over 200,000 people have lost their jobs. Every lost job costs at least €20,000 between social welfare payments and lost taxes. That’s four billion every year! The Taoiseach has admitted in the Dáil that unemployment could go to over 450,000 by the end of this year. That’s another two billion!
That’s the problem in the public finances. The cost of job losses and the taxes lost because people are no longer spending. The problem in the public finances was caused by the downturn in the economy, not the other way around.
Difficult decisions will have to be taken on taxation and spending, but the public finances can only be restored to order by getting people back to work. By restoring consumer confidence, and by getting the economy moving again.
We are not going to solve this economic crisis unless we put jobs at the heart of everything we do. That is why Labour has been putting forward proposal after proposal, to save jobs, to create new jobs and to restimulate our economy.
For the past year or more, we have argued that tax incentives should be shifted from property to start ups in innovation and technology. We proposed a new National Fund to extend credit to small businesses. We suggested an "Earn and Learn” scheme to enable workers going on short-time to up-skill and retrain. We proposed practical measures to get construction moving again such as building schools and insulating homes. We were proposing better financial regulation long before the banking crisis.
But we must do more. Let us be clear that the greatest false economy is to pay people to do nothing.
That means we must fight harder to keep the jobs we have. Who says that when a Dell or an Ericsson or an SR Technics decides to up sticks and move their plant abroad, that their Irish employees must inevitably be made redundant?
Their jobs might be, but their skills are not. Why can’t Enterprise Ireland find a new use for those skills? Instead of paying people who have lost their jobs, can we not invest in keeping them? Does it not make more sense to spend €10million now to save 1000 jobs, than to spend €20 million every year to keep those people on the dole.
There must be opportunities for those who are losing their jobs. They may be unemployed, but they don’t want to be idle. This is the time to launch a skills revolution. We needed it in good times – we need it even more now. Tens of thousands of adults need to go back to training and education, to up-date their skills and to acquire new ones. Not just because the economy needs it, but because education is the great liberator. It gives people choices and new chances.
No young person should have to go from school or college straight onto the dole. We are proposing a Graduate Work Placement Scheme, that connects businesses, voluntary organisations, even the public sector, with graduates looking for the experience that is so crucial when looking for a job.
If there are teachers graduating from college, for whom there are no jobs, then let them get started working as teaching apprentices in the classroom. Building their experiences, sharing their skills. And in the same way give unemployed solicitors placements cutting the waiting lists at Legal Aid Centres.
And there are many who might use this slack time to make a contribution in the developing world, if we facilitate that too.
We must do everything we can to support job creation. In these exceptional times, employers PRSI should be cut for at least 18 months, where a new job is created and filled by someone who has been unemployed.
These are creative and short term measures which will pay for themselves. We need to look too at the enterprises which can be developed here in Ireland and which are not entirely dependant on the global upswing. Like new sources of energy from wind and wave. Renewing farming and food production.
Turning our faces back to the sea all around us to rediscover our potential as a maritime nation. Finding some tourism use for all those half empty hotels that were built with tax breaks during the boom.
Getting people back to work, and restoring the confidence to buy among consumers is key to solving the crisis in our public finances. But that crisis is now so bad, and so urgent, that it can not wait for the new jobs and the new spending.
In less than two weeks the Government will introduce the second budget, and their fourth attempt to stabilise the public finances for 2009. The Labour Party offered to fully engage and to be positive, and I regret that the Government decided to be evasive and partisan and to keep the key budget information to themselves.
What we need is a plan for the public finances, not just another set of panic measures. We need a budget that is part of a coherent three-year National Recovery Plan. You cannot close the gap between income and expenditure in one year alone. Too much harsh medicine will end up killing the patient. Sending the country further into a downward spiral of job losses, followed by cuts, followed by more jobs losses, followed by even more cuts.
Do taxes have to increase? Yes, they do. They are increasing already and are going to have to increase more. No-body likes that, but there is no choice – that is where Fianna Fáil has brought us. The gap cannot be sustained.
We will publish our pre-budget statement next week, and our tax proposals will include a third rate of income tax for the highest earners.
But when we pay more tax, and deep down we all know we have to, then it must be progressive and on the taxpayer’s terms. The Government must end, in this budget, the practice and status of tax exiles.
You know you couldn't make it up. Sell the company, split it three ways, send the three spouses off to Italy for 183 days, so they qualify as tax exiles and you avoid paying the capital gains tax. That game is up now. If
working people have to pay more tax, then everybody is paying tax. And that goes too for the tax reliefs on property and on director's pensions.
We will only get out of this mess, if we work together, as one Ireland.
Not by scapegoating nurses, teachers or gardai, or by targeting vulnerable groups like special needs children.
But by insisting on better value for money in the public services and having clear bottom lines.
That means that no-one who makes an honest effort to pay their mortgage should lose their home.
That means that €16 million is a small price to pay to vaccinate teenage girls against cervical cancer. That means that now is not the time for cuts in education. Labour would reverse the cuts in special needs classes. Reinstate the school book grants for our schools. Lift the cap on Post Leaving Cert Courses and keep universal access to third level education.
There has to be sacrifice, yes, but terms and conditions apply. The time has come for fundamental reform. Twice in a generation, Fianna Fáil has brought this country to the edge of disaster. Twice too often. It is now time to say 'Never again’.
This time ten years ago, I brought to a Labour conference a report on housing prepared by Professor PJ Drudy of Trinity College. It warned that the rapid rise in house prices was unsustainable, that land speculation was wrong and should be ended and that increased levels of borrowing needed to sustain it would lead to economic grief.
But Fianna Fáil would not listen and for the decade since they have nurtured the culture of crony capitalism which has now sunk the hopes and aspirations of a generation.
It was a perfect circle, where their friends in the know speculated on land, their councillors re-zoned it, their friends in the banks gave them the loans to finance it, the government gave them tax reliefs on it, and the working people who paid for all of this with excessive mortgages are now going to have to pay for it all over again now that it has come crashing down.
Labour’s mission is to replace that kind of Crony Capitalism with a Merit Society. Where we reward people for hard work and genuine risk, not sharp dealing and insider trading.
Where we break up the cosy club of cross- directorships, where you sit on my board and I chair yours.
Where we clean out the banks, by having the State take a controlling interest – a majority shareholding.
If we are all in this together, and we are, then there cannot be a parting of the ways when we get to a hospital door. ‘Reserved Enclosures’ are for racecourses, not hospitals. Progress in our society, the awarding of contracts in business, and the appointment of senior posts in our system, cannot be on the basis of how close you are to Fianna Fail, but how well you can do the job.
But to end Crony Capitalism, you first have to end Crony Politics. It is not enough to dismantle the Galway tent - We have to break up the cosy cartel that sheltered under its roof.
That is the political choice which every man and woman in this State can make on June 5th, when we all go out to vote in the local and European elections.
The best way to end developer-led planning is to elect more Labour members to our Councils, because we can be proud of Labour’s record of integrity in Local Government. Because we can look any voter in the eye and assure them that Labour representatives serve no interest but the public interest.
June 5th is important too because it is the day we elect our new members of the European Parliament. These elections have never been more important.
Because the recession is not just an Irish problem, it is a European and a global problem and we can not get out of it on our own.
That is why Europe is so important to us. Why the European Union needs to be able to make decisions quickly and respond nimbly to rapidly changing new world conditions.
That’s why the reforms in the Lisbon Treaty are so important. Why the Labour party was so right to back it, and why we will do so again, if the government brings forward new proposals which are to our satisfaction.
And it is why we are proudly asking for support for our European candidates Proinsias de Rossa, Nessa Childers, Alan Kelly, and Alban McGuinness of the SDLP. And why we are tonight welcoming that courageous journalist Susan O’Keefe to our team.
June 5th is important too because it gives every adult in this country an opportunity to make a statement which is stronger and louder than any protest. An opportunity not just to vote in protest against a bad government, but to call for a fresh start and a new future by voting for the Labour party.
To get out of this recession.
To do it together.
To build a new, better and fairer Ireland.
To meet the challenges of our times as one Ireland, and to remain one Ireland.
It is the time for one Ireland. It is the time for Labour.