Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his forthright comments. The biggest issue I see with all of this goes back to what Deputy Healy-Rae said about being at home in your own house with your own finances and how you deal with them, and if a person wins a few pound in the local club lotto, what he or she does with that. We have a situation here where we can end up, if look back from the future, as credible people who looked after the country, or we could be looked at as the people who squandered.

With regard to keeping the balance right and to keep the political balance right so that we are actually making the right decisions for now and for the future, and having listened to what has been said here today, the thing that would be of most interest to me is the National Reserve Fund and what model it might take. It is about where we put the money if we are going to mind it, the mechanisms by which it is withdrawn, and what the triggers are that would allow us to take out the money again.

I agree wholeheartedly that we need to write down some of our debt as we go along. It is important that we do not end up saying, "That this is for somebody else to deal with". The narrative around the excess we have, which is an increase in the tax take from the pharmaceutical and tech industries and so on, which is a windfall tax, is creating a sense that we are awash with money that we can do what we like with. Coming back to the issue of housing, which is an area I am comfortable talking about, one of the biggest challenges is not the money at the moment, it is actually the capacity to build out the houses.

In that regard the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has responsibility for the NDP. I had a discussion earlier with one of the guys from Macra na Feirme, who was president of that organisation back in 1978 and 1979. He was saying how circumstances have changed. One of the issues he commented on, which I have also always commented on, is that we have managed to create a huge paper trail industry, which is actually the speed at which we can get things done. We are spending a lot of money on doing a lot of things that perhaps we do not need to do. They seem to be the right processes and we do not ever say that we will take a process out of the way. We kind of defer it and say we need to look after the way we spend the money when actually we are spending an awfully long time trying to get projects from inception to construction. That timeline is costing money with no return. I would like the Ministers' comments on this. If we do anything from a budgetary point of view, we could take our public procurement, and all that goes with that, and turn that on its head. I do not believe that at this stage the procurement we are using is delivering value for money. We are not taking into account the cost and the huge amount spent on consultants and whatever else to try to meet the paperwork that is required. That money would be better spent in a practical way in getting things done still have value for money. With housing, we could speed up that process a lot more if we took a lot of the gateway approvals out of the process and let the local authorities do their business, albeit with a check and balance on it but not to the extent that we have now. It is delaying up to five years getting a project running from the time we buy or procure the land and service the land until we actually get a contractor on it. Hidden costs have been built into the system that need to be taken out of it.

Coming from rural Ireland, I would love to say to the Ministers that I want them to build the western rail corridor starting tomorrow and Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh will agree with me. I want them to do many more things in the west. For balanced development in this country, we need to look at the report that came from the EU Commission that says the north and west of Ireland, which are regionally similar areas, are actually very low down in the pecking order in the context of growth and competitive index. A task force with teeth should be set up to rebalance economic development in the State, and to make sure we are positively discriminating towards these areas that are lower down the pecking order. I agree that a lot of things are being done, but there is a lot more to be done. We should take that EU Commission report and embrace it, and try to extract more money from EU Structural Funds, where we can now go for 60% rather than 40% because we are a lagging region. We should take advantage of that. It is no criticism of any Government that we should try to capitalise on the way we have been described and designated right now. It is an opportunity. Perhaps I could have the Ministers' comments on all of that.