Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The estimated cost of running the State next year, €54 billion, sounds like a lot of money. If we were talking about the EuroMillions, we would say the punters were throwing money in tax paid at the Minister. As is the case in respect of EuroMillions, everyone hopes to win. Taxpayers hope for a new school for their area, decent care facilities for their older relatives and a bus or train to catch to work every day rather than having to experience a two hour nightmare in a car. As with EuroMillions, the Minister has produced some winners. The consequences of public investment, such as the Luas and Dublin Port tunnel, even if long-delayed and over budget, are welcomed with relief in that they will help to make matters better.

My former Labour Party colleague, Fergus Finlay, now chief executive of Barnardos, the children's charity and lobby group, put his case very well today when he asked why it is that, although the Minister will have 108 times more to spend than Mr. Haughey did when he was Minister for Finance in 1969, today's bonanza figures produce no great joy among the general population. People are worried that the elderly are now more at risk and have less entitlement to dignity than at any time in recent decades. People with disabilities are still waiting in queues for essential services and some 65,000 children still live in consistent poverty. Much poverty is intergenerational such that if a parent is poor, his or her child is also much more likely to be poor. One in three children from disadvantaged areas leaves school with severely limited capacity to read and write and do simple mathematics, which are cornerstones for progressing in education and obtaining a decent job.

People can no longer understand the billions of euro; they only understand the stories and denials that relate to them, their families, friends, villages and communities. Saying this is not to deny the economic progress that has been made, how much it is welcomed and the pride therein on the part of all parties in this House who contributed to it. It is just that, with so much money to spend, the report card for the Minister reads: "He could do so much better".

Consider an article attributed to the Minister in The Irish Times, published just before the publication of the Book of Estimates. I suppose he may say he did not write it because it is a bit of a mouthful even for someone as clever as himself. It states:

In parallel with a responsible, long-termist approach to budget policy, we have been making record investments. That year on year investment by Government in our social services and physical infrastructure is now having a real impact.

I am not sure if the Minister believes this. Had he looked at a little cartoon in the health supplement in the same paper, he would have seen the true picture. It alluded to longer delays and more queues and complaints and presented a very different view of conditions on the ground than the rosy scenario painted by the Minister.

Let me raise some serious questions about Leas Cross nursing home. There is no issue in respect of which people feel more uneasy and upset than that of Leas Cross and the other nursing homes in respect of which scandals have been emerging. The Minister for Finance and his predecessor, Charlie McCreevy, have clearly been determined to rely on tax-driven private sector investment in private hospitals and private nursing homes. Leas Cross raises a serious question over having a private health system driven by tax breaks for investors rather than an ethos of care. The Minister will tell me circumstances are different but I do not believe him.

Articles in today's newspapers, particularly one by Colm Keena in The Irish Times, carry some extraordinarily disturbing information about the Leas Cross nursing home and the company which ran it, Sovereign Projects Limited. The Irish Times records that for the year ended 31 January 2005, the home, on a turnover of just under €4 million, made a pre-tax profit of €619,839, or approximately 16%. This is an extraordinarily high rate of return. Not many enterprises, even in Offaly, are turning over such profits. Given that Leas Cross nursing home is probably in receipt of tax breaks under the special capital allowances scheme for nursing homes, which is very generous, it would be interesting to know how much tax, if any, it was liable for, even before it started incurring losses as a consequence of the HSE taking corrective action in respect of its activities.

It seems that as an investment Leas Cross nursing home, like many others, may have been primarily a tax-avoidance product. The home is located in the green belt and agricultural belt in north County Dublin. Nursing homes and other institutions can be built on such belts with few problems regarding rezoning. As I said to the Minister in last year's debate, such nursing homes, located in rural north County Dublin, are primarily development-based and enjoy the added benefit of extraordinarily generous tax breaks for the ten years for which they must operate.

The ten-year operational period was increased to 15 years for new developments from last February after I raised the issue with the Minister for Finance. Located as they are in remote rural areas, the nursing homes offer their elderly residents no independent access to local shops, the church, post office or local pub. Once again, our friends in Fianna Fáil seem to have the interests of property developers and builders much closer to heart than the needs of the frail elderly.

Ireland lags far behind many other countries such as Australia and even the United States in providing care for the elderly. We know the best solution for elderly people is for them to remain at home for as long as possible. Joined-up, care-driven solutions would include significant grants to insulate homes, install mobility aids and expand the home help system.

I met the carers in Blanchardstown this morning, including one who is looking after her 96 year old mother. We discussed why it was so difficult to obtain an occupational therapist's report and have simple aids installed in old persons' homes. It would not take an Einstein and we certainly have the money to do it.

Experts predict disaster for the health care system. The number of acute beds per capita is far below the EU average, with only 2.5 per 1,000 people in the greater Dublin area. The population will continue to increase for the next 15 years and the Minister is not responding. HSE capital spending has been cut by 2.6%.

The crisis in accident and emergency departments continues. HSE figures released to Deputy McManus in September show that only one new accident and emergency consultant post has been approved for the entire country since 2003.

While the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, made great play of increases in her budget that will allow a modest increase in the capitation grant to schools, it is hard for parents to celebrate when they know that their children remain in super-sized classes and can look forward to spending their entire school career in overcrowded accommodation. The increase in the capitation grant will not even meet the increased heating, electricity and insurance bills that many schools face.

The Minister does not seem to recognise the scale of the crisis in the school system. This year I have received figures for school sizes showing that in the nine schools in Dublin 15 for which she supplied figures there are a staggering 89 classes with more than 30 pupils out of a total of 155 classrooms surveyed. This means that 57% of pupils in those schools are in super-sized classes. The ongoing failure of the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government to recognise and plan for the extraordinary population growth in developing areas such as Dublin West is disturbing. The Minister and departmental officials are putting heavy pressure on most schools in the area to increase to four streams, or 32 classrooms, catering for 1,000 primary pupils. This strategy means that the current and next generation of Dublin West schoolchildren will remain in the most overcrowded classrooms in the country.

Last week, at a public meeting in Littlepace in Dublin West, Dublin Bus confessed that its worst time for a bus from Dublin 15 to town on a quality bus corridor was two hours and 14 minutes because of gridlock on the M50, N2 and N3. It is hard not to appear churlish when one sees the awesome amount of taxpayer's money the Minister has at his disposal in the Estimates but which, although delivering more, does not seem to deliver better. The quality bus corridor from Blanchardstown launched seven years ago is still not complete and the average journey time has risen consistently, now coming in at 111 minutes. One of the draft output statements to which the Minister referred was from the Department of Transport. The output in question was eight quality bus corridors, but it did not state journey times on such corridors from Lucan and Blanchardstown to the city centre had worsened considerably. As an output measurement, that is especially meaningless.

The Taoiseach, when opening the National Aquatic Centre, famously spoke of Blanchardstown being a 20 minutes' journey from the GPO, to gasps from the audience. That might well be the case if one were travelling in a State car or had quality public transport. Unfortunately, we do not and the question is why people should grant the Government five more years of excuses, failure to complete and simply messing about. I concede that there has been welcome progress, but it is equally true that quality of life on many fronts has diminished, including commuting, public transport, buying a home, safety on the streets and reasonable health services.

The Ministers opposite often complain that people do not understand them. Sometimes they sound like they are on their way to a counselling session. They believe people fail to recognise that everything is really improving, but for many, parts are getting very much worse. It is not hard to see that the emperor has no clothes when one is wedged like a sardine on a train from Clonsilla. There are extra trains but twice the number of passengers. Passengers regularly faint because of overcrowding and are carried off, commuter soldiers in a battle that the Government will not win any time soon.

It is extremely disappointing that the Government has failed to address environmental issues in the Estimates. Irish society faces serious challenges in developing renewable energy sources and tackling carbon emissions. The world energy outlook of the International Energy Agency, IEA, for 2006 warns that many countries are on the road to disaster, with under-investment in renewable energy sources and increasing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Strong action is needed from the Government to get off this path, as Ireland currently has over 90% of its energy provided by imported supplies of fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas. Such is the lack of ambition on the part of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats that, rather than addressing the problem, they seem happy to contemplate our paying tens of millions in European fines for failing to live up to obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.

The allocation in the Estimates for overseas development aid is welcome. However, the increase of 16% in bilateral aid, Ireland's direct programme with some of the poorest counties in the world, is dwarfed by contributions to UN and international bodies which, according to the Book of Estimates, are to rise by between 21% and 37%. A development programme should not simply be a case of blank cheque increases to fora such as the unreformed United Nations and other international development bodies. Ireland provides a positive example on the ground in the developing world, co-operating with local partners to complete water projects and carry out valuable health and education work. I do not know what has happened to our reputation for imagination and brilliance in Third World development that we should now simply put a cheque in the post to the United Nations. That is wrong and does not accord with our country's traditions.

Perhaps decentralisation has something to do with it. We have not heard much on the subject in this programme. I understand the latest bright suggestion from Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats is that technical specialists stay in Dublin, while other development aid staff move to Limerick. That would result in development aid being broken down into several sections. What would this do for the coherence and delivery of the programme? Decentralisation, as implemented by the Government, has been an expensive folly. Ireland and Dublin could do with proper, planned regional decentralisation, but not what we have seen from the Government.

There has been serious mismanagement of public spending projects in recent years, from PPARS to electronic voting, and an extraordinary lack of progress on projects such as integrated ticketing, which is now three times over budget but has delivered nothing. The original cost was to be €19 million, but that figure has now risen to €42 million and the meter is still ticking without anything having been achieved. There is nothing in the Estimates to show any evidence of joined-up government in providing services and securing value for taxpayer's money.

In short, public services are not being delivered as they should, given the levels of taxation people are contributing. They are willing to pay fair taxes at low rates for quality public services, a view probably shared in the Minister's party. However, members of the Carers' Association to whom I spoke this morning have not seen any delivery to those for whom they care. I know that the Government is trying to do more, but my honest view of the HSE is this. I had hoped it would work, but with €14 billion going on health services, we should be celebrating a milestone in the provision of quality care for those who need it. However, I will not be celebrating any time soon. I am simply awe-struck. The Minister is a clever man and he, too, must be awe-struck at signing off on a provision of €14 billion for the health service when a visit to any of his local health service institutions would surely have him observe with incredulity the standard of service delivery in 2006. Perhaps after ten years in government he is obliged to defend every aspect of public service delivery. He should be allowed off the leash to discuss in earnest the reality of life for so many families throughout the State.

To return to the EuroMillions analogy, it seems the only people who win the jackpot under the Government are those who invest in tax driven schemes, whether to develop private hospitals or other initiatives. There is no doubt such persons are enjoying the jackpot. What about the young couple who must pay stamp duty on the purchase of a modest second-hand home which costs €340,000? Such persons are struggling rather than enjoying any jackpot.

I spoke to a woman today who was in tears because her application for an affordable house had been rejected because her income slightly exceeded the limit for the scheme. She could not see a way for herself and her teenage daughter to get a home of their own. She is aware that she pays more in rent than she would pay in mortgage payments if she were successful in her application under the affordable housing scheme. We will discuss this issue later when we debate the Labour Party's Private Members' motion on housing.

I am aware that a worrying amount of Government expenditure is simply absorbed by public pay rises. Given the scale of funding at the Minister's disposal, however, amounting to some €54 billion, it is clear we could all be jackpot winners if only we had a Government that could manage the expenditure of resources to address the needs being expressed by people in every county, from north to south and east to west.

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