Ms Colette Bennett:

In response to the Deputy's many comments, I think a lot of them are interrelated. He mentioned the need to invest in infrastructure. We would very much be behind that. While we have these windfall taxes, we need a long-term investment plan for them so that what we do invest in is going to sustain us into the future. Certainly, housing would be top of the list. We are hearing stories of teachers and healthcare professionals who are leaving city centres because they just cannot afford it anymore. Whether they are moving down the country or out of the country altogether, we cannot afford that kind of brain drain, essentially. We rank 41st out of 63 countries in the IMD world competitiveness ranking. That feeds into what Professor Kinsella was talking about in terms of how we protect the relationship with multinationals, while also moving towards our goals in relation to the upcoming white paper on enterprise that focuses on building up the capacity of our indigenous enterprises. We certainly need to do all of that.

In terms of the health services, in both capital and current expenditure, as Dr. Healy mentioned earlier, there is a complete lack of transparency when it comes to the budget. The IFAC estimates that we need €900 million just to stand still in terms of our existing levels of service, ELS. When we talk about increases in the health budget of €1.2 billion, that is really not the increase it appears to be when the majority of that is adjusted to safeguard the existing levels of service.

In relation to the artists, certainly there were some moves made in the pilot on basic income. We have plenty to say on that, as I am sure the Deputy is aware. While it is very welcome for those 2,000 artists that it will support, unfortunately, we are closing down artistic spaces. Again, it goes back to the infrastructure issue. We are building hotels and closing down theatres, nightclubs and all of those cultural spaces that we desperately need. In terms of what we need, we need to move away from those regressive measures, we need to build in our infrastructure and we need to plan properly into the future.