Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome the Ministers and their officials and thank them for their contributions so far. I will try to be as brief and concise as I can. I was listening attentively and I am very sorry as this is my fault. I am failing to grasp something with regard to the no policy change - I am speaking about the portion of money that is going to be put aside to deal with the whole Ukrainian issue. Has that money been decided, put aside, or what is the situation with it? I really apologise, it is my fault if I did not pick it up right but I would like the Minister to clarify that if he can allow me that indulgence.

Like everybody else I am delighted and find it remarkable that we are going to live to see the improved financial situation that we have. Of course, with that comes enormous responsibility on the Ministers, their colleagues, on all of us and on the officials to try to do the right thing with regard to the future and with excess receipts that we might have. It reminds me of a very famous individual who was asked one time what should people do when they find themselves in a situation like this. I heard the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath speaking about the national debt. I really have to wonder if we would be serving the people well. Every one of us wants to spend the money. We want to see the money being spent on housing, infrastructure, health and all of those things. However, we have to also be prudent. We were all brought up to save for a rainy day and to think of a rainy day. If you have a good day today, you have to remember you might have a bad day tomorrow, or a bad week or month, and you might have nothing coming in, especially when you are self-employed and you really have to try to balance for the future. If a person comes into money and if they are only budgeting in their own house, the first thing they should do is look at the expensive things like credit card debt. Would they really be serving themselves better, rather than trying to save the money they have or do something with it, to actually cut down on the expenditure that they have? I heard the Minister say that the national debt was manageable but I wonder should we be looking at trying to reduce it. Is it serving the public, the people we are there to work for and represent, that we would try to combine that with the core spending that we have to do to keep the wheels of commerce and the business of running Ireland up to date?

When it comes to the whole housing issue, I was accused the other day of not declaring an interest so I want to declare an interest in that, the same as in farming or anything else. I would have to say that I am very fearful for the future of the private rented market when I hear debates going on in the Dáil like earlier today. Suggestions were being made that would actually hunt whatever is left in the private market out of it. When we are talking about building houses for the future, public housing, which we want to see more and more of, at this meeting and every meeting I go to and every public forum, I will ask in the honour of decency if the politicians in Dáil Éireann who are objecting to housing projects will stop that. If they do not stop, if the people who are decision-makers in Dáil Éireann are making serial objectors of themselves, it will be very hard for us to house people. I have to get that point across.

When it comes to securing the future finances of the country we have to look at what happened today. Young people marched for 15 hours to come to Government Buildings to hand in a letter with eight points. I am referring to Macra na Feirme. They are the young taxpayers we want to have involved in farming, who we want to serve. One of the main things they are looking at is a retirement package for farmers. Anyone who was in elected office 20 years ago will remember that we had two schemes then in farming. One was to help older farmers to retire and it was financially beneficial for them to do so. Then there was a good package for younger farmers to come into farming. At both ends, getting out and getting in, it was financially attractive. Right now it is not. We do not have anything meaningful enough to encourage the older farmers to retire. I am not talking about people who are really old but those from their mid-50s onwards who might be thinking about passing over to the younger generation. The younger we can get people into farming, the better possibility we have of them staying at it. Those young people who came up today are representative of young people up and down the length and breadth of the country. I would really like to see us doing more to encourage them to stay in farming.

On the corporate tax receipts, I heard a Deputy making a comment the other day about data centres, suggesting that we should not have any more of them. Fair dues to the interviewer, who asked the Deputy about the tech jobs. The answer was, "What about them?" I want to say about the tech jobs that, like the Ministers, I appreciate the foreign investment that we have here. I appreciate the tech jobs and the massive financial benefit they are to our country. I welcome them and would welcome more of them. When I hear that sort of irresponsibility coming from certain sectors of Dáil Éireann it makes me worry as to what is going on inside in some people's heads when they have such a hatred of people who come here to create wealth, jobs and employment and to make a profit for those companies. I said it the other day and I will say it again. There is nothing wrong with anybody, any entity or group of people wanting to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with it. If they pay their taxes, it is a perfectly healthy and sensible thing for any person, group or company to aspire to do, to wash their face, make a profit, grow and continue to create employment. I say this just in case any people involved in tech jobs think they are not welcome because of a statement by one Deputy the other day.

I suppose we will always have one person making such a statement, or, in our case in the Dáil, a few. Many of them are serial objectors.

I thank the Ministers for the work they are doing and I do so in a very personal way. We might often have our disagreements about political goings-on but everybody knows the Ministers are always trying to serve the best interest of the people. Now, more than ever, when our economy is turning what we will call a good corner, we need to have people working with them, their officials and Departments, not against them. They will want people to make sensible suggestions. We hope they will take those suggestions on board, be they on infrastructure or other matters. If through capital investment we can improve our roads, bridges and accessibility, help rural areas and spend more money on those areas, we will help to keep people there. That is the type of work we want. We want to see an Ireland improving all the time, with no one left behind. We want to create a genuine environment of work in which work is rewarded. It is a sensitive matter because – there are certain sectors that would not like to hear this – if we are taxing certain people out of business because they are being charged at a rate of 56% to provide services, we really have to start thinking about how sensible it is. I am, of course, referring to the mass exodus at present from the private rental market. There are 80,000 fewer private residential tenancies compared to ten years ago. A very simple sum indicates 350,000 people who would have been housed through private rental tenancies are not today. That is a very startling figure. It is no wonder that the housing crisis is where it is, with the continuous berating, belittlement and harassment of people involved in the sector. I certainly do not agree with going after Airbnb properties. It will prove to be folly in the future. Anybody in the Government who believes 12,000 people can be made to change from renting in the short term to renting in the long term needs to reflect on it. Eighty percent of people surveyed recently said they will not be forced to do so.