Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials. Before I get into some of the aggregate figures, I want to mention four segments for consideration. The first is the voluntary sector and specifically section 38 organisations. As the Minister is aware, workers in section 38 and section 39 organisations took the same public sector pay cuts and more, but they have not had any restoration. The Lansdowne Road agreement provides for the community sector forum which is ICTU and the Minister's Department. They have written repeatedly to the Minister and his Department and have repeatedly been turned down for the forum that is provided for. Perhaps the Minister could put this issue onto his agenda. I really do believe it is something to do. The voluntary sector workers have taken an extraordinary beating over the years. They have had no pay restoration and there needs to be a very serious look at the various voluntary organisations having core pay restoration in order that they would at least see some rise in line with public servants.

That is the first thing.

I echo what Deputy Burton said on the arts. We are at one sixth of the European average, which for a country that clearly cares deeply about our arts and our heritage is dreadful. There is a quote, apocryphally attributed to Churchill, which is brilliant. It is alleged that when his mandarins came to him during the Second World War suggesting they needed to cut funding for the arts to pay for the war effort, he said, "Then, what are we fighting for?" While it turns out he did not say that, he should have. It is a brilliant idea. While we need to provide housing and there are many very serious things we as legislators and the Minister need to look at, we must not forget our souls while we are doing so.

The third point is just an idea. It is to do with Brexit. I have been talking to many small and medium enterprises, SMEs, in Wicklow and throughout the country. An economist in IBEC told me yesterday that the multinationals account for 90% of our exports. While indigenous SMEs are, therefore, responsible for 10%, they also account for 50% of export related jobs. Things are beginning to happen below the surface and I encourage the Minister to look at some funding, probably very small, for Enterprise Ireland, EI, and local enterprise offices, LEOs, to begin to reach out to SMEs to start to prepare them for what may happen. It would help them to start looking at different markets.

The fourth matter is a bugbear of mine, which is the privatisation of the broadband network. It is penny wise and pound foolish. If additional money is to be found for capital, we should keep it in public ownership. It is highly likely that what we will see is exactly what happened when we sold Eircom. We will see monopolistic behaviour, lack of necessary investment and monopolistic pricing throughout the country.

I will get into the aggregate figures in a second, but I put those four areas to the Minister first.