Lord Mayor,

It’s difficult to find comfort in these seasonal economic monitor reports – now a type of doomsday record of the Irish economy’s state – one would like to think that one is bouncing off the bottom of the recession barrel but looking at the figure of 444,299 people signing on the live register, 26, 249 of those in metropolitan Cork; there are years ahead of us in rebuilding the Irish economy plus to bring it back to a sustainable state that even the letters IMF don’t appear in a report such as this.

It would be remiss of us when on such fever infested topic without mentioning the recent Nyberg report, which was very eye opening

Finnish banking expert Peter Nyberg stated that the main reason for the financial crash was the unhindered expansion of the property bubble financed by the banks.

It said the problems causing the crisis were the result of domestic Irish decisions, rather than international factors.

The main conclusion of the report was that the Financial Regulator did not have the bottle to bring Anglo Irish Bank to book over risky lending and stop other banks jumping on the bandwagon.

The inquiry into the cause of the country’s banking crisis has found authorities, including the Central Bank, did not understand the dangers of a property boom.

And it found the cause and scale of the €70bn meltdown was homegrown, while worldwide recession has made it worse.

It also shattered claims, put by the last government, that the collapse of the US bank Lehman Brothers sparked the Irish crisis; that events were already put in motion.

He said the top bank executives paid little attention to risks they were taking through shockingly large lending and chasing Anglo’s growth rates.

The report finds Irish authorities “had the data required to arouse suspicion about trends in the property and financial markets” – but either failed to understand it, or weren’t able to evaluate and analyse the implications correctly.

He says the real problem with the financial regulator was not a lack of powers but a lack of scepticism and the appetite to prosecute challenges.

It is my personal feeling that those findings are pathetic and appalling and never again should such financial responsibility lie with such reckless individuals.

We as Irish people have spent the last ten years obsessed with making money; and even now after the fall, we are still obsessed with money but this time paying it back.

Just three final comments Lord Mayor, the celebration of new retailers in the city centre, , Kuytuchi, Tommy Hilfiger, Emobile, Tour America, Edinburgh Woollen Mills is somewhat justified and sometimes not…they are creating local jobs but most of their revenue is exported plus also they continue to add to the general erosion of the City’s unique and native retailing shops. It’s important that we promote equally international and native retailing experiences, otherwise we’ll just have a city centre of shops which you can find anywhere in the world.

Secondly it’s terrible to see the fall in tourism numbers, a drop of 13 per cent, total overseas visitor numbers fell by 15 per cent, arrivals from mainland Europe fell by 17 per cent. Failte Ireland need to be asked questions about this…

On a positive note, it’s great to see exports up by 18 per cent in the last quarter of 2010. I would like to thank those individuals who are out there in the world, pushing for a better result for Ireland

Lord Mayor, it’s too easy to dismiss such a document – this economic report – we should write to the new government asking for the proposed plan forward for all the difficulties presented within this document. There are no instant solutions but there must be a sustainable plan forged to move forward…