Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is being increased from an historically low level. It is not just a case of starting to reach the European average or being a leader in terms of expenditure in capital in Europe. Over the past ten years we have had the lowest level of capital investment in Europe. When I was at school there was a sign with the seanfhocal, "Ní hé lá na gaoithe lá na scolb", which means the day of the storm is not a day for thatching. What the Minister is doing is trying to put €3 billion away, which is a tiny amount if we have to deal with a major unforeseen event, instead of dealing with the leaks we have at this point in time. While I do not want to rehearse the point, we have a crisis in housing. The increase in capital proposed for this year is not ambitious enough to deal with the 10,000 people in emergency accommodation, not to speak of the 100,000 people on the waiting list. Our universities are slipping down the international rankings. Look at the presentations being made to the Minister's Department seeking €3 billion in capital investment for physical education. That is without addressing the need for additional investment in current spending on education.

We spoke about the barriers in the area of childcare. Ireland tops the league for childcare costs for single parents and is placed second for childcare costs for couples. There are many other challenges. The Government has normalised the crisis in health. Every day, 400 people wait on hospital trolleys and the Government does not view it as a crisis. The fiscal rules were designed to ensure we do not return to the policies of the Fianna Fáil era and the "if we have it, we will spend it" attitude. They curtail the level of spending by member states in any one year. If the Minister had any sense of patriotism, he would use the resources and flexibility available to us within the fiscal rules to deal with the real human crises we are facing every day. There are hundreds of thousands of people waiting for operations and hundreds of people on hospital trolleys. There are 10,000 people homeless. We have no broadband in rural areas. We have creaking infrastructure and massive underinvestment in health and education. This is the time to fix the leaks and make sure that when the storm comes we are not facing a housing or other crisis. If the Minister does not act now and an unforeseen event occurs, we will be unable to cope.