Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the various groups that have taken time to speak to us today. My questions are on the real capital expenditure on infrastructure over the next few years. The Government is currently beset by ongoing difficulties associated with housing. While the level of building a private houses has certainly picked up, there is almost no significant progress being made on social housing or, indeed, affordable housing. In that context, does each group believe it is correct to establish a rainy day fund per sewhen the Government could establish a housing development bank or corporation that would use funds, including projected dividends from NAMA, to fund local authority social and affordable housing? Money would be repaid to the development bank fund via social housing rent and mortgage repayments on affordable social housing. Do the various groups believe that simply putting money on deposit in a rainy day fund, which would be placed on deposit around the world, is the best use of a very scarce capital resource at this time when we could follow the example of countries that have found other mechanisms? We are no longer restrained in the way we were over the past ten years in terms of capital investment as a country.

My second question concerns the summer economic statement, which has just been published, and the amount of €2.6 billion, which has been committed in terms of the €3.4 billion envelope that the Minister for Finance has identified in terms of next year's budget. Could ICTU, in particular, comment on the plight of people employed by section 39 organisations who in many cases voluntarily took reductions in pay in line with the public sector but who have failed in seeking to restore pay parity? I do not see any reference in any detail in the summer economic statement to any restoration being committed to specifically by the Government. Has ICTU or its member unions reached or developed any further understanding with the Government on making this one of the priorities in sorting out issues that arose in 2008 but which have yet to be rectified?

On the health service, have any of the organisations considered how to increase dedicated funding to the HSE and Tusla? As we know, the Government has pretty much experienced fairly constant crises in different elements of both of those organisations for the past two years.