Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

In the short time available to me I wish to raise a few fundamental questions about the Finance Bill. Debate on the Finance Bill is one of those very few occasions when Members have the opportunity to ask questions or reflect on the performance of the economy and particularly the relationship of the economy to society. This afternoon we have had a type of outing by Fianna Fáil backbenchers who got so carried away as to describe the Minister, Deputy Cowen, as a visionary, which perhaps is a step too far.

I would like to speak about the vision which lies behind the Bill and I do so by seeking to answer a simple question. How can the economy do so well with so many people unhappy? The manner in which the economy has expanded — I listened carefully to the speeches which described its expansion — raises some fundamental questions. For example, we must ask how much time is spent on survival and by what proportion of our population. It is unrealistic not to take into account that the housing market has so torn a hole in the economy that there is now no longer a choice for one or both partners to work. Both partners must work in an inflated housing market which has been driven by speculative tax allowances to those who want to own multiple homes.

Again, it seems like puncturing the heady nonsense we have had for quite a while to suggest that out of 81,000 housing finishes in this current year, we built less than one quarter of the social housing we built in the 1970s. I do not have the figures but it is perhaps 6,000. In between, we have a small number of what is called affordable housing. I will not delay on that, other than to say there is no comparison between the requirements for inclusion on the social housing list and those for inclusion on the affordable housing one.

What we have witnessed is the people being driven into the economy without choice. More than 65% of the women who are available for work now work in the economy and 1.5% are over the age of 65 years. I wrote elsewhere that there is no one else left to be driven into the economy. That raises a question about what a number of speakers said. I believe Deputy Fiona O'Malley mentioned that the economy was only an instrument. However, let us examine the relationship of the economy to the society. I suggest that what was described in the Minister's speech and right through several supporting speeches is a depeopled version of the economy which raises issues. The economy is being described as a mechanistic model which is separate from people's lives. It seems irrelevant that one must work longer hours and drive longer distances, one no longer has any hope of owning one's own home and that elderly people must subsidise deposits on homes for their children. It is as if this does not matter and as if the economy has been spun away from the society.

Irrespective of which party is in power — I say this genuinely — this is a dangerous model of the economy and society. It is predicated on a type of radical individualism which has nothing to do with personal freedom or choice.

I will suggest how a social economist might have looked at this in the past. He would ask what evidence existed that the tax breaks to which the Minister for Finance referred were an incentive and if this economy was like an engine into which one must continually pour fuel to get it to start. For example, one might provide incentives to initiate a productive activity about which one could then measure productivity or its outcome. However, what kind of old engine is this that regularly needs to be primed to such an extent that it spews out a divisive kind of redistribution to the rich rather than to the poor? It is reasonable to ask, for example in respect of the model at the core of the Finance Bill, what is the distributive effect of the market worth? Then in turn, to ask what is the distributive effect of the Government's action? Can we assess the Government's action in terms of compensation for market effect, in terms of market correction, or is there an attempt at redistribution?

Let us be real. What has happened in relation to the redistribution of either income or possibilities for housing? If we looked at this another way, as the economy generates surpluses that are historic, could we not have afforded universalism across a range of different things if we wished to regard the economy, as Deputy O'Malley did, as instrumental to a set of social purposes? We could have had universal access to education and improvements to the capital schemes which would have improved schools at all levels. We could have had universalism in health and transport as well as having universal provision in respect of a set of securities for old age.

None of this is mentioned in either the Minister's speech or in any speech in support of the Finance Bill. It is as though the social purposes of the economy do not require mention. It describes a private world of consumption, based on a radical individualism in which for example, it is taken for granted that there is an endless amount to which an individual is entitled by way of tax incentives. There is no limit to the number of houses an individual in the Irish Republic should own. There is no limit to the amount people should put into their pension funds and millions of euros are insufficient. There is no limit to the amount that someone with a contract for gathering tolls on the roads may receive.

It behoves Members to ask how this could be so while many people still struggle with rent allowances. If the income of two working people goes a few euro above a particular level, they will lose their rent allowance and their medical cards. Consequently, a significant section of the population is locked into an economics of survival. Even if one asserts, in the manner of those 19th century ladies who visited the poor of London, that it is sufficient to scatter something in their direction, this still does not answer the question as to how one can justify an economic structure that systematically redistributes to those who already avoid bearing any burden of taxation.

There is a profound ideology behind this, which posits a certain kind of connection between the individual and the State. Since the House last discussed a Finance Bill I was interested to discover that the Taoiseach's reading material had included Professor Putnam's book, Bowling Alone. Professor Putnam's work was interesting in its description of what it might be like in a white suburb in the United States where people had become bored and no longer joined voluntary organisations. However, they could muse on this point while enjoying an income of more than $200,000. However, Professor Putnam's model had very little to do with what was thrown up by events in New Orleans, where poor white and black people lacked cars to escape from what happened to their city. Huge pockets of poverty are buried deep within any society and the Finance Bill is when one has an opportunity to either address or ignore this issue. The notion that we can somehow begin a debate as to why people do not volunteer for this or that is nonsensical, if one has conscripted people into the economy and has not given them any time to be at home with their families, never mind to join voluntary organisations. Moreover, some of the Government's ideological gauleiters in the PDs have suggested that we should conscript people into the economy until the age of 75.

A debate on citizenship will require a debate on rights. Such rights will include social, economic and cultural rights and the test of an economic Minister, or a Minister for Finance is the degree to which he or she has defined citizenship in terms of participation, inclusion and security in old age, the kind of housing to which one is entitled and how one can have time with one's children and in what environment. Since I entered this House almost 20 years ago, I have often heard Ministers state that while they would like to implement one policy or other aimed at inclusion or universal provision, the resources were never there. Now however, although the resources are there, they are not being allocated within a social framework that would address such issues.

The Taoiseach has been described as the midwife of social partnership. So be it. However, when he proceeds to the rebirthing that is currently under way for the new social partnership agreement, perhaps he will inform the House of his discussions with the social partners on their attitudes towards State assets and State property and the acceptability of selling State property in the capital to purchase property above the market rate in places in which staff are to be sent. Moreover, as for State assets held in the semi-State companies, what ideological force drives the compulsion to sell them? Why must we sell the Great Southern Hotel group? Undoubtedly, the trade union representatives will want to ask the Taoiseach why, under a ruling of the Competition Authority, they are not allowed to represent atypical workers in collective agreements. Moreover, when the trade union representatives consider the long history of social partnership, they might ask why the commitments to social housing provisions have never been met.

This matters because that is what people are asking on the street. In the short evenings that families currently have together, they ask how they will manage. For example, on Monday some members of a family described to me how they moved from a house which they rented for €850 per month to one for €650 per month. They paid €200 for two days in a crèche for one of the children. However, when one member received overtime in the building industry, they lost both their medical card and their rent allowance.

This took place in an Ireland with a surplus of billions. Ministers state that we have a healthy economy and we have had an economy in surplus. While it is good that those who did not previously pay their taxes now do so to some extent, it is obvious — the Taoiseach referred to a group he called the bright boys — that some get away with a great deal. Interestingly, and the Labour Party will raise this issue later this week, the Great Southern Hotels group had a trading deficit of €6 million in the current year. At the same time, we have transferred, in terms of taxation foregone, €128 million to private hotels which do not carry the same burden of the training as the Great Southern Hotels group. Therefore, one must penalise the semi-State sector that provided the infrastructure for the private sector which must be assisted to the tune of €128 million.

People will return to consider this issue. They will ask how, in the best of times, with historic surpluses running to billions, Ireland could be unable to have a public transport system or a health system that could give security to the vulnerable. They will ask why approximately 750 schools were in a state of deterioration and how could it have a school transport system which was not entirely safe. I welcome the benefits from external circumstances and favourable trading conditions, but I found it provocative to describe what is being put before us by way of a Finance Bill as "visionary" or as something that expresses a deep social commitment. That is a great nonsense. An interesting tension arises in every aspect of Government policy to which I have referred.

This brings us back to something in which all Members are interested, that is, the tension between the two pillars at the root of the Lisbon agreement. One is competitiveness, which absorbs all the energies of Government, and the other is cohesion. Cohesion is important because citizenship is about solidarity and being able to extend beyond the self to take other considerations into account. What is at stake is the destruction of the public world and the suggestion that a private world can replace it. Citizenship is predicated on solidarity, participation, equality of provision, security and universalism. It is high time we had more space to discuss what social agenda and vision should drive the economic instrument that is the Finance Bill.

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