Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start by thanking the members for the holiday reading. I certainly will not have time to do all that reading. I thank the Minister and his officials for attending and being so forthright. I will begin with the issue of revenue leakage from our economy. Have we a method of calculating that? I refer to it because I come from a Border county where there is major fraud, illicit trade, leakage from the Exchequer and pressure on the retail sector as a result. There is also online trading, where no rates are being paid and there are no overheads. People are able to get .ie domain names relatively easily and purport to be trading in the economy when they are not. Is there a calculation of those figures? I am aware there was a Grant Thornton report on that a number of years ago, but have the Revenue Commissioners a method of calculating it?

With regard to the labour force, one of my concerns is the issue of full employment. Today a businessman contacted me about bringing 20 labourers from England onto a building site. He was having difficulty securing accommodation and temporary PPS numbers for them. To what extent are we planning for that? Clearly if there is going to be immigration as a result of creating jobs in this country we have to fast-track them.

Finally, there is the issue of demographics. We know from the CSO that our population will grow. The projected increase is in excess of 60% for the cohort aged over 65 years. To what degree is the Department planning for that ageing population and ensuring they have the services they require?

I will conclude on the housing issue. It is great to see the economy growing in various sectors. For example, there have been major factory announcements in my region. However, how will people find a place to live? What planning are we doing for that regional development? There were three announcements of new factories for Dundalk, and I am sorry to be parochial about this.

This was massive news, as massive employment will come to the area but no housing. What planning are we doing to ensure we do not end up on a slippery slope on which people will say they can create opportunities in Ireland but cannot create places to live for those who would be critical to those factories?