Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his presentation and his attendance at the meeting. I am reminded of the rainy day fund. With the way things are going between Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, a rainy day fund would be needed every week to try to keep pace with all the different challenges that have been put before him over the past two and a half years. It is important that we recognise we are definitely in uncharted times with Covid-19, and now we are in a time of war. It is uncharted for us in this country that we are affected so much economically by a war that is happening in Europe. It is frightening in a way.

With regard to the budget and our committee's role, we have oversight on the budget and we look at what is happening. The Minister said forecasting is fraught with uncertainties and with changing events from day to day or even week to week. However, I wish to hone in on two areas. The first is trying to keep the economy going and moving forward. On the works set out in the national development plan, with the inflationary problems we have, will more money become available for capital projects? It will take more money to do what we were forecasting to do next year and in the following year. I am especially concerned about projects such as the rural development schemes and the urban regeneration schemes where it is costing more money to do the projects now. Will money will be available to do them, even for projects that were sanctioned and the budgets set, but those budgets are now gone out the window?

The second area is public works contracts. There is a problem in the construction industry at present. Projects are priced with a fixed price for up to 30 months. Contractors are now in a position where they cannot budget for these projects or price them because they cannot see past next week in terms of the costs and the inflationary issues there. This will have a negative effect. It is something we need to examine urgently. I have spoken to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform as well. At this stage we have to look at amending the public works contracts to make them fairer and to allow contractors to be able to price them with an opportunity to cover the risk of hyperinflation, as is taking place now. It is holding up projects getting done and employment being created in the industry. I fear that over the next 12 months we will see a retraction in the industry unless something is done to make these contracts more what I would call sharing of the risk, as is the case in every other country in Europe. Ours is the only country that has such risks attached to the building contractor in public works contracts.

In the area of housing, I am glad the Minister said he is a supporter of the help-to-buy scheme. I ask him to consider extending that to properties that are vacant and derelict to allow second-hand properties to be brought onto the market and make them living spaces for young people who want to live in our villages and towns and even in rural areas. We need to examine that.

These are emergency times, and I heard the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, talking about this in terms of emergency legislation possibly being required to help with housing for the people we are bringing in from Ukraine - rightly so, and we should not cap that. However, if we are doing emergency legislation to make accommodation available for people coming from Ukraine, we should do it for all. The housing policy is Housing for All so we need to include that. If the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is talking about emergency legislation, he should be looking at it in the short term for everybody, so everybody can avail of short-circuiting planning or whatever it takes to get us to a stage where we are building faster and renovating faster to provide homes where people can live and have a quality of life.

They are my comments on the budget and the economy at present. Does the Minister have a response or what does he think of my thoughts on it?