Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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The Minister has given us examples of contingencies which might arise. Has the UK Government's budgets always included a contingency amount, going back several centuries? The Minister is speaking about contingencies such as an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. He is presiding over a homelessness and housing crisis. Every Deputy receives messages hour in, hour out from people who are in desperate situations. This morning I raised with the Minister's colleague, the Taoiseach the issue of the health budget and whether the Government had made a grave error in the health Estimates for 2018. I cited one specific waiting list for children on the autistic spectrum who needed early intervention assessments. The Minister may know because it is also his district that the waiting list is well over 300 children, 150 of whom have been waiting for more than a year and some for almost two years. These are contingencies for which he should have provided in normal budgeting.

I remember that the Minister said about something else that it was bonkers. That seems to be a favourite word of his, but is it not bonkers to be thinking in these terms when the Government is not meeting the essential needs of the people? Clearly it has not met them in the areas of health and housing this year and perhaps in education and others also. If it cannot meet them, why are we talking in a nonsensical way about setting up a rainy day fund? I look back at the record of the Minister's predecessor as Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, about which people will be incredibly critical in the future but not the media that tends to puff up Fine Gael. However, others will look back at it and see the real austerity and setbacks people had to endure during the period, which we need not have had to endure because the Minister and others voted in favour of a blanket bank guarantee. At this stage of our development, I look back on it as being bonkersand cannot see any basis for it. The country has a debt of €42,000 per citizen, one of the highest national debt figures anywhere and still greater than 100% GNI. Why would we let it sit there? If the position will be better in 2019, 2020 or 2021, why would we not use the resources to try to get back to where we were before the Government made the errors it made and the errors made by the previous Government in 2011? At this stage in our history, the basis seems to be incredibly flawed.

The Minister spoke about deposit mechanisms. Has he given any consideration to hypothecation? If he were to do this in the future and we were running significant surpluses, perhaps we might look at a surtax on very wealthy earners which might be hypothecated into a fund. We had a pension fund which was our wealth fund. We were not in the league of the Norwegians or the Saudi Arabians, but we had a significant wealth fund which the Minister's predecessor and former Deputy Brian Cowen totally got rid of, diminished and blew away. The NTMA is holding a net €14 billion, but it has to engage in significant refinancing in 2018 and 2019. As the Minister's colleagues in the Department of Finance know, the situation is still dodgy enough in refinancing the national debt.

The Minister spoke about emergencies. I will take flooding as an example. We have always known it. It dates back to the time of the de Valera Governments in the 1930s and was something the State did not address. To be fair to some of the Minister's colleagues, we are beginning to address it, but we always knew about it.

The Minister mentioned Estonia. There is a group of Deputies who interact with others in some of the Baltic countries. Estonia suffers from grave infrastructural deficits and has a very small population. I do not know, therefore, whether it should be used as a model. By the way, Finland has a countercyclical fund, as we are told in the report of the Minister's Department. Again, one wonders as the Finnish experience is different from ours. There is no point in comparing Ireland to the United States because it cannot run a deficit or borrow. I do not know whether this is fantasy or, to use the Minister's own words, just bonkers?