Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am deadly serious about the forestry sector because it has significant potential, which has not been taken seriously. Despite the significant employment potential it offers, development in forestry is being hampered by European Union state aid rules. Renewable energy is another area with significant potential. I ask Ms King to comment.

I fully agree with Ms King on the need for heavy investment in education. We have the potential to move ahead of the curve in a number of areas of scientific and technology development if we had such investment. Developing medicines is another area. While I acknowledge that the pharmaceutical sector is a major industry, we must increase indigenous capacity and develop new medicines through links to universities and so on.

Does Ms King agree that the arts is an area in which there is substantial underinvestment? Given the large talent pool we have and the potential high return on investment in the arts, we must consider the employment this sector could generate.

On the big picture, while the nasty, dangerous right-wing manifestations of disillusionment with the European Union and globalisation we see in Trump and some of the Brexiteers are alarming, do they not also speak to something that the left, the trade unions and all of us who do not want to see this type of expression of disillusionment must address? By this, I mean the deep dissatisfaction with the inequalities created by globalisation, for which the EU bears much of the responsibility as it pushed a neoliberal globalisation agenda that has helped to produce inequality. Where this feeds into much more specific problems is the whole area of increasingly unequal distribution of wealth. We need to discuss this issue more as budgets approach because we often hear about the nuts and bolts and nothing of the overall trajectory we are trying to achieve. People like Thomas Piketty have drawn a picture of this for us. Does Ms King agree that we need to start talking about the issue?

There is undoubtedly increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth and income. The left and trade union movement need to talk about closing this gap and using tax as a mechanism to redistribute wealth. We are much more vulnerable to shocks and booms and slumps because wealth is increasingly unequal in its distribution. With wealth located in fewer and fewer hands, we become increasingly vulnerable to shocks. I ask Ms King to comment.

Mr. Paul Sweeney has done a great deal of work on wage share, an area in which a consistent shift towards profits and bonuses and away from workers as a proportion of national income has been identified. Does Ms King agree that this issue is not discussed widely enough?

I fully agree with Ms King's emphasis on social housing. We and others have been in despair at the failure to address the housing emergency. Much of the discussion focuses on financing housing construction and the narrative from the Government is that loads of money is available. This begs the question as to why social housing is not being delivered at a faster rate. While finance is important, the discussion needs to move on. If, as the Government claims, there is substantial money available from the European Investment Bank, credit unions and so forth, what is the problem? Does Ms King agree that a large part of the problem is that Governments have moved away from the old method of delivering public housing via direct construction by local authorities and that, in addressing a social housing problem, they insist on involving the private sector, which causes all sorts of delays, problems, trade-offs that hamper the delivery of public housing?