Bruton: By the end of 2017 Ireland will ‘not be borrowing a cent’

The Labour Party want to focus on paying down the national debt, while Fine Gael are prioritising investment instead of debt repayment.

Speaking this morning Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said the county will have to “use the flexibility of EU rules” to make up for a decade of under-investment.

Mr Bruton said: “I don’t think any modern economy that has the sort of investment needs that we have would be anticipating that you would be devoting all your resources to debt reduction and you would be investing in the assets that will grow you economy and grow jobs.

“We are a developing economy. We need to use the flexibility of EU rules to develop our economy.

“So those rules are fail-safe mechanisms to protect Europe and national governments. We have the youngest population in Europe, we are in a growth phase a recovery phase, we need to invest in infrastructure to underpin that.

“We have gone through nearly a decade of under-investment so we have to use the flexibility of EU rules to deliver our need of our people.”

He also promised a job for anyone who wants one within the next four years.

Mr Bruton was speaking at the launch of Fine Gael's jobs plan in the CHQ Building where he said that jobs target set by the Government during its last term would now be doubled to 200,000 extra jobs by 2020.

He added that from the end of 2017 the county would “not be borrowing a cent”.

Mr Bruton said: “There will be no more growth in our debt after that and we will be paying down debt from various sources, sometimes from the realisation of assets from the banks or sometimes from the rainy day fund we are establishing.”