“Brian Cowen must take a huge amount of personal responsibility for our current economic situation. The figures are now indisputable. The ESRI has forecast that economic growth will fall from 5.9% in 2007 to -0.4% in 2008, while the CSO has announced that GDP was down 1.5% for the first quarter.

“We are now entering a period of serious economic decline, particularly in construction. The Government has sleepwalked us into this situation and we are now facing into a very difficult time indeed. The Government urgently needs an appropriate and proportionate response to get the country back on the right track.

“We know from past experience that cutbacks hurt the old, the sick and the disabled. The Labour Party’s position remains that any Government response must, as an absolute priority, protect the most vulnerable in our society while sustaining investment in our education and public transport systems. This investment is essential to securing our long-term economic future. Draconian spending cuts would only serve to deepen the recession and depress exchequer income further.”

“Despite it being obvious that an economic downturn was coming, the Government have treated this as an inconvenient truth. They buried their heads in the sand and waffled on about ‘international factors’, even when the decline in Ireland far outstrips the decline in any of our EU partners.

“The economy and the exchequer were left to become over-reliant on an overheating construction sector. Property speculators feasted on a diet of cheap credit and generous tax concessions. This development was not inevitable. The Government is entirely complicit in our current economic misfortune.

“We have not yet seen the Government offer anything like a comprehensive analysis of our economic situation. Instead, we get a slow drip-feed of information as if the Government hopes the people won’t notice the recession creeping up on them. Introducing cut-backs by stealth is no way to conduct Government business.

“Without accurate information, it is difficult to plot a course back towards economic sustainability. Serious questions also need to be asked about the ability of the Government to make accurate economic forecasts at all. Until very recently, the Government had refused to even contemplate reassessing the forecasts made on budget day back in December even when it was plain for all to see that something was amiss.

“In December 2006, Brian Cowen forecast growth for 2008 of 4.8%. In December 2007, he revised it down to 2.8%. Now the ESRI forecast that it will be minus 0.4%. These erroneous forecasts have triggered a fiscal crisis in which it seems the poor, the sick and the handicapped will be made to suffer for the Government’s mistakes.”