Taoiseach Enda Kenny – Address to the nation
Good evening.
Tonight I’m taking the opportunity to speak to you directly on the challenge we face as a community, as an economy, and as a country.
I know this is an exceptional event. But we live in exceptional times. And we face an exceptional challenge. It is important that you know the truth of the scale of that challenge – and how we are addressing it.
That challenge:- To restore our economy.
To create the environment to sustain jobs, and to look after the most vulnerable people in our society.
At the end of last year, our economy was in deep crisis.And while steps to recover from the crisis have been taken…
We remain in crisis today.
I would love to tell you tonight that our economic problems are solved, that the worst is over. But, for far too many of you, that is simply not the truth.
If you’re unemployed, you’re one of the many who still can’t find work.
If you’re in business… you may still not be able get the credit you need, or to get paid on time.
If you’re a parent who has just put the children to bed… you may be wondering how you’re going to meet that mortgage, or pay those bills.
Or you may be looking at your adult children. Wondering how you’ll say goodbye to some of them as they leave Ireland in search of new opportunity in the New Year.
Tonight, that may be the truth as you live it, and know it.Let me say this to you all:
You are not responsible for the crisis.
My Government is determined that now; the necessary decisions and changes are made to ensure that this is never allowed to happen again.
Right now, our most important responsibility is to do what must be done to get our economy back on its feet.
That requires fixing the enormous deficit in our public finances caused by too much borrowing and the cost of rescuing the banks.
We all know that if, in our own lives, we are spending more than we are earning – we have a problem.
Right now, the State is spending €16 billion a year more than it is taking in.
This problem will not be fixed unless we take action to bridge this gap.
This can only be done by us, ourselves. Working together.
That means that in this Budget we must cut public spending by €2.2 billion and raise €1.6 billion in extra taxes.
When we were elected, the Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and I, pledged that our Government of Fine Gael and the Labour Party, would fix this deficit in a way that would get Ireland working. We began by taking urgent steps to stem the crisis and close that gap in our public finances.
We are shutting down dysfunctional banks and we have recapitalised the remaining ones at a lower cost than expected, by imposing losses on some bondholders.
We implemented a jobs initiative that cut taxes on tourism and employment, and that created over 20,000 new job and training placements.
We secured a lower rate of interest on the country’s borrowings that will save us €10 billion over time.
We have met our commitments to the EU and IMF in full, and on time.
This has been acknowledged worldwide, and has helped restore some international confidence in Ireland.
But the steps the Government has taken merely reflect your courage, your character, and your sense of responsibility, for which I
thank you.
While none of this has ended the crisis, and we have not so far been in a position to do everything we promised, we have made a start.
We have begun to stabilise our finances.
The improved confidence has helped strengthen exports – a key driver of future success. But we have a long way to go.
This week, we will introduce a budget that will build on those first steps towards recovery. This budget will be tough – it has to be.
It will move us towards a manageable deficit of 3% of our GDP by 2015.
But getting the deficit under control is just a means to an end.
The main purpose of this budget, and of our four year strategy, is the creation of jobs for our people.
Jobs are central to this budget because work plays such a central role in our lives. Work provides focus. Work gives us independence. Work gives our families hope.
I get to meet lots of people in this job – a woman in Limerick whose husband had found work after being on the live register for months told me, “he did not just get back his job; he got back his dignity; once more he felt he was making a contribution.”
We won’t be able to create jobs overnight.It will take time.
But, by 2015, I want to see our deficit under control and real growth in jobs.
We are not able to do all we would like to in this budget because we simply can’t afford to. We have had to postpone some really good projects – like Metro North, for example.
But this budget will be a jobs budget in two ways: Firstly, by putting our public finances back onto a sound footing.
As our deficit moves to sustainable levels, investors will start regaining their confidence in Ireland and credit will be made available at better rates. This means businesses will be able to start borrowing, expanding, and hiring again.
Secondly, the budget will include a series of targeted measures specifically designed to create jobs and get people back to work.
It will include, among other initiatives, a new system of loan guarantees will enable banks to resume lending and a new micro finance scheme which will help people to start their own businesses. This will allow small firms to take on one or even two employees:- New jobs to create new incomes, to assist the economy on the path to growth and confidence.
To make sure we keep as many jobs as we can, to make sure you get to bring home as much as you can, and to make sure you know where you stand with your wages.
To give you some certainty for the year ahead, we’re leaving income tax untouched.
Instead, we will raise the 1.6 billion of extra taxes that Ireland needs mainly through indirect taxes, difficult though these will be.
The highest priority is to create more jobs, but we will also do all we can to protect the most vulnerable in our communities – our children,
the sick, and the elderly.
I wish I could tell you that the budget won’t impact on every citizen in need, but I can’t.
Difficult choices are never easy, but we will invest in crucial projects like the National Children’s Hospital, school buildings and health centres.
Before asking families to make sacrifices, we also insisted on sacrifices from those at the top:
We cut the pay and removed state cars and Garda drivers for Ministers.
In the last few weeks I have informed former Taoisigh that entitlements, like free mobile phones and staff allowances are being withdrawn.
The pay and pensions of senior public servants have been cut.
This week’s budget will go further.
50 quangos will be abolished or merged, and the public sector will be downsized by 23,000 people by 2015.
Next year, we will hold a referendum to abolish the Seanad.
But these steps are just a start.
We will reform how we run the country so that we never return to the practices that drove our economy into freefall – reckless spending, weak oversight of banks and reliance on a property boom for tax revenues.
However – In Ireland, an island nation – we cannot operate in isolation. We are part of the European Union.
All the changes we undertake ourselves are set against the backdrop of continuing uncertainty about the future of the European single currency.
Let me be clear – Ireland supports stronger economic governance throughout Europe, and particularly in the Eurozone.
In fact, the Irish people are paying the price now for the absence of such rules in the past.
European leaders must make and – more importantly this time must implement – clear decisions this week to prove our shared determination to protect our currency.
Otherwise, international confidence and investment in Europe will continue to fall.
In the ongoing negotiations in Europe, I will work to achieve a positive outcome for Ireland – one that ensures and protects our economic security.
Firm action will help to restore confidence throughout Europe, and here in Ireland.
In outlining the Government’s strategy with you tonight, I do not for a moment want to make it sound simplistic or painless. It is not.
We are on a four year path to recovery. This, our first Budget, is a necessary step, but it will include cuts to many worthwhile projects.
It will also raise some indirect taxes which will be hard for many people.
The truth is, our economy remains fragile, and it will take us several years to recover fully.
While the creation of jobs will be at the centre of our plan, I am painfully aware this will not happen quickly enough for many who are out of work today. It will take several years to create the numbers of new jobs we need.
But over the last months we have made a start.
Towards more jobs. Towards more opportunities. Towards renewed confidence.
A start towards a country where our young people can stay at home to build their future here, rather than moving away.
A start in essence toward getting Ireland working again.
That’s the commitment the Tánaiste and I made to you when you elected us. And that is the commitment we are working to deliver each and every day. We have begun taking hold of these problems and deal with them head on.
I am very optimistic for the future.
I want to be the Taoiseach who retrieves Ireland’s economic sovereignty, and who leads a Government that will help our country succeed.
I want to make this the best small country in the world in which to do business, in which to raise a family and in which to grow old with dignity and respect.
All around Ireland, I meet people who want to play their part in achieving those goals.
I meet young people, students and business people who are full of ideas, energy and optimism. I want to enable them, and many others,
to achieve their full potential.
I believe Government, being honest and open, working with the people, will meet and beat the challenges we face.
Next Tuesday December 6th is the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty in 1921.
Just as our fledgling state made its way to becoming a Republic then –
I believe with all my heart, that we the Irish people can now make our way to recovery, to prosperity and to the fulfilment of the dreams of our children and the founding fathers of our nation.
Your thoughts…
No real substance to it.
No point.
bit of a party political broadcast alright. Was hoping he’d be coming out with something concrete about preserving our sovereignty in light of the rumbling from the EU.
Irish State: 1921 – 2011?
Oh FFS, don’t you guys get it. We are signed up members of the European Union whose goal since its inception has been a United States of Europe. Sovereignty is all well and good if you can support yourself like Norway, but we cannot and we never will. All this lunacy about leaving the EU and getting the punt back is plain insanity – mouthed off by fringe lunatics on the left and right. Whereas the likes of Sinn Fein can dream about a marxist 32 county republic, god help us if that crowd ever got into power. If things are bad now, just imagine what things would be like if the lunatic fringe got their bloody mits on the leavers of power.
What would happen?
Shove your amateur analysis; I understand better than you do what a breakup of the Euro would mean for this country.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to ever support a policy though of handing over long term oversight of this country’s fiscal policies to Europe.
It is absolutely integral for the economic future of this country that we are able to return to a situation where we can have absolute control over our own taxation and spending policies.
“Shove your amateur analysis; I understand better than you do what a breakup of the Euro would mean for this country.”
Lol….
@AP
Qualify this statement, by saying “In my opinion I understand better than you”
Frankly other than statement of self opinion which cannot be backed up or tested – you cannot claim to know more than someone of which you have no knowledge of their qualification or experience.
As for your final statement – “It is absolutely integral for the economic future of this country that we are able to return to a situation where we can have absolute control over our own taxation and spending policies.”
It reads like the omnipresent glittering generality weaseled out of a PR text book and dished up with all the flag waving zeal of an invertebrate dunce.
If repeated often enough some people might actually believe that the Irish state (and in particular those who claim to have had their hands on the leavers of the economy over the last thirty years) actually has an economic policy of any merit whatsoever. If the past is anything to go by, one cannot be optimistic about the future.
I wait with baited breath, to see how a country with such a poor track record in running its own affairs is going to put right what it has singularly been incapable of doing on its own for much of the last 90 years.
Indeed, one cannot wait to see economic sovereignty being returned to the sots who have spectacularly mismanaged this country and who have used (on more than one occasion) the revenue of the tax payer for a litany of kickbacks, dodgy schemes, subventions and grants to the advantage of sleaze which they cannot do presently now that our budgetary measures are – as the German accountants would say “Unter vier eugen” (a nice euphemism for saying closely scrutinized)
concur – EU is a free market/ free movement trading block. (Remember ECSC? EEC?) We’ve added a currency now, but that has to be where we stop it.
That should have read “Unter vier augen”.
ah no. to look at something “Unter vier Augen” means more “between you, me and the sea”.
which is what got us here in the first place.
i say us. i mean you.
‘You are not responsible’…
But we will pay for it.
+1 Sickening.
But a lot less so than “we all partied”.
We’ve all pissed in a bed, said Enda.
And here I was thinking it was all my fault.
Honestly, I was racked with guilt over it….. thank god its not my fault
ROFL Brilliant
+1
“this can only be fixed by we, ourselves” haha! Doesn’t that translate as Gaeilge to “Is féidir é seo a shocrú ach amháin le linn sinn féin a”? Sorry for inaccuracy had to use google translator, but we ourselves is sinn féinn!
That was really shit, but to be fair, Terry Prone has had a very difficult week.
+1000
Nice one Terry. You did a great job of making him look sincere.
Here. The Limerick missus.
Giving Michael Noonan the finance gig (when he’d done nothing for years) doesn’t count.
You couldn’t hang your coat on that. Waste of time. Enda wouldn’t inspire a fart out of a room.
Ourselves alone!
The Irish people are totally responsible. That bit really got to me- it’s just electioneering by infantilising.
Party political broadcast and nothing more. Selling Fine Gael™
Well.
The big bad Fianna Fáil look like they’re coming out of the sub 20′s
Shit.
I forgot to watch the live broadcast.
I’m glad I forgot to watch the live broadcast!
The speechwriter made a good job
of
breaking
everything
down
into simple points.
It was trite, cliched and banal.
It doesn’t make me feel that the government have the balls to handle the crisis.
too much omen.clown.
*closed eye hug* “It’s not your fault, you are not responsible…”
[stab] [stab] [stab] [hug] [stab] [stab] [crying]
I hope your PR people are on a no foal no fee payment basis ? & licsense payers did not have to contribute to this dross ?
Pretty meaningless, really, an awful lot of cliches and stating the obvious.
Not sure there was much point in a speech at all but surely they could have managed at least one new turn of phrase.
Never thought I’d say it but at least Mary McAleese’s speechwriter had a few original ideas.
Nice to know we’re not responsible for the crisis, that’s a weight off my mind at any rate.
Why do we always get ridiculous timeframes for the “turnarounds”. 4 years is just not realistic. It sickens me to hear about honesty and transparency and then to have 4 years stated as a time frame. More electioneering and political bullsh!t.
No balls…
No gumption…
We are the lemmings of Europe…
Enda: “It’s not your fault…Look at me, it’s not your fault…”
Plain People of Ireland: *Shrug* “We know”
Enda: “It’s not your fault…”
PPI: “We know!”
Enda: “No…No you don’t. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault…”
PPI: “Don’t fuck with us alright, don’t f*ck with us Enda, not you”
Enda: “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault”
*Enda embraces Plain People of Ireland*
PPI: *sob uncontrollably” “Oh God! Oh God we’re so sorry”
*Budget passes with no dissent*
lol
What’s funny is that my comment underwent moderation, but they must have only found the second F-bomb offensive/gratuitous…
I love that movie
lets make this not a reality.
@ Jase
Legend, that made my morning worthwhile :)
This is the best thing I’ve read all morning.
Sacrifices Imposed on Those at the Top by Taoiseach Shocker!*
*’those at the top’, in this context, means 28.4 individuals in direct receipt of joke money from the Govt. It should not, under any circumstances be seen as a threat to Business, or anyone involved in getting Ireland back to work, e.g. hard-working executives. Thank you. P.S. Well done again, little people, on taking it all on the chin so bravely.
If we’re not to blame, then who is?
Name and shame Enda.
Sorry, is this meant to be the real speech? It’s satire, or taking the proverbial…surely?
Who got voted off the X Factor lads?
Hold the line until we’re f***ed out of government. Nice one Enda.
And disproportionately targeting (or maybe more like savaging) the unemployed while leaving income tax untouched, low, very low.
+1
More likely: “Hold the line until we’re in a position to borrow from the markets again so we can have a FF-style giveaway budget and buy the next election…”
What’s with the hands?
Is that like a Traveller thing..?
Come near me you little French Dwarf an’ I’ll clock ya!
“in which to grow old with dignity and respect” Best of luck with that… http://bit.ly/sJK0VB
“Our 4 year strategy”, “By 2015″
Proof that this doe-eyed lost little puppy can’t think outside the terms of his own time in office
bingo
nor can any of them – they’re not programmed to, and why should they be when that’s all that;s necessary for their own employment.
Leave the income tax, the people with jobs will stay
here and vote in the next election.
Viewers who were affected by the issues raised in this broadcast can find further support information at ryanair.com and irishferries.com
lol.
+1
#yawn
Is it ever possible to somehow “hire” in an outsider or someone outside of your own borders to run the country – the same way a non-executive serves on a board? Or similar to a corporation (or national football team) will have a person at the head who is not bound by nationality.
I ask this in jest and more so in reference to the lack of strategy and foresight in Irish politicians.
I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with Irish politics and do not look forward to returning home to the motherland any time soon.
Soon to be the Fatherland
yeah, we have hired a lovely fella called Chopra. He’s running the place at the moment. Leaves the shit speeches to Inda though.
So run for election then
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
http://thestory.ie/2011/12/04/enda-kenny-overruled-two-ministers-to-give-e35000-pay-rise/
Can we please have a revolution now. How long more must we take the cloaked insults and fake sincerity? C’mon people, the only sacrificing we should embrace is Enda and all his pallywallies getting the chop on a guillotine on College Green. Smarmy, condescending waste of organs.
Surely there must be a way for all of us to oust these delusional, supercilious asses as soon as possible. We must not capitulate!
Vive la Révolution
Was it for this? – That I missed the X Factor?
The speech was as expected and the right thing for FG to do. I just find Enda Kenny so insincere and condescending.. makes my skin crawl.
FF back in power in no time….any takers!
F**k off, gombeen.
+1
Am I the only person who respects Enda Kenny? Obviously the speech wasn’t all facts and figures, it couldn’t be, it was aimed at the general public. It was good politics, a message to let people know that the government are aware of the issues and are working to combat them. Nothing more than that.
Fair play, they needn’t have said anything!
oXMPP – Am I the only person who respects Enda Kenny? I certainly hope otherwise this country is really in trouble… errr.. even more.
As much as I’m sick of the politics from government, the cynicism from some quarters of the public is just as vomit inducing. Leave the country now and spare us amateur hour.
I heard that if you play Enda’s speech backwards it says…
….Bertie is to Blame….him and his usless back scratching blaggards…., and so forth :)