Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The glossy high-performance car they were encouraged to buy last May was going to hum and produce large amounts of tax revenue to fund numerous doctors, gardaí, teachers and tax relief. Suddenly, one finds it is spluttering and shuddering and will not deliver any of these. People will take a long and hard look at what is happening. We have been here before as Fianna Fáil talked up the economy prior to elections but as soon as those elections were over we discovered all types of unenvisaged cutbacks would be implemented.

The Government has built a reputation for economic management on the back of a debt-driven property boom. We have had major growth in revenue sources coming from this property boom but as it is stripped away we see the reality of how the boom has been squandered and how the Government has handled the resources given to it. We had high spending without reform and large increases in bureaucracy without matching delivery at the front line.

We never see a Minister step up to the plate to take responsibility when anything goes wrong whether it be with regard to nursing homes or, as Deputy Kieran O'Donnell highlighted recently, problems such as those concerning Shannon when miraculously Ministers were not informed although everyone else seemed to know. The worrying aspect is that at present Ireland is going through a difficult transition forced upon us by the forces of global and climate change. We are presented with major challenges for which the Government has not prepared us well. This is the background to what we are debating.

The document produced last Thursday shows that in 2008 the Government will be €2.2 billion off the tax revenue it projected last year. The Minister proposes to make up this by switching a promised €1,800 million in surplus on the general Government debt into a deficit. The first line of the manifesto which Fianna Fáil produced prior to the election, when it sold itself as the great economic manager, was that it would not run budget deficits but would run the economy prudently to have budget surpluses. At the first test we see the Minister providing for a budget deficit.

The difficulty is that while one can run a budget deficit for an unexpected blip, the Minister projects a number of years ahead where all the promises made and factored into the manifesto are gone. People are right to worry that the Government will choose the soft option of pushing ahead with manifesto commitments, funding them on the back of borrowing. This asks the next generation to pay for Fianna Fáil manifesto commitments. Alternatively, we will see what we saw in the past when the stealth tax route was adopted to fill the large hole in the Government's finances concealed prior to the 2002 election and which emerged afterwards. Many families and businesses were left to carry the cost.

The tax projections for 2010 which the Minister for Finance had in the manifesto are exactly €4.9 billion off what is projected in this pre-budget outlook. The commitment the Minister had in his manifesto for new spending programmes and tax reform in 2010 was an identical figure. What these tax projections mean is that there is a black hole that wipes out the entire Fianna Fáil manifesto promises by 2010. I presume the Minister hopes there will be some recovery in the last two years. Even if it recovers on the scale he projected originally, back to 4.5% growth, to the low rate of inflation, the best he can hope for is that he will be able to fund 20% of his commitments by 2012. That is the reality. That is what this book tells us.

There is a need to have honesty from the Minister, instead of talk about wanting to hear what Deputies have to say. We want to hear what the Minister has to say about commitments he has made to people — 4,000 extra teachers, 2,000 extra gardaí, 2,000 extra consultants, 500 extra public beds in addition to the 1,500 PPP beds, the cutting of PRSI, the cutting of the top rate of income tax, indexation to wages of all bands and credits. What is going to give? Let us see the Minister's options list and what is affordable next year in order that we can have the meaningful debate that he says this new structure is designed to promote. This is not a meaningful debate because the Minister is not contributing anything. We have his manifesto but we have no meaningful contribution from him on the options we face for the coming election. We know what he wants to do but we know he cannot do it so we have to see a reduced form as to what he thinks is realistic for the coming year. We are not getting that.

This is a dialogue in which the Minister expects others to contribute while he says nothing about the most important thing that jumps out, that is, the gaping black hole in the middle of the Fianna Fáil manifesto which is underpinning the programme for Government. If the Minister wanted a meaningful debate today, we would be listening to that. People do not have memories as short as the Minister thinks. Let us not forget the last time we were to have 80% paying at the standard rate of tax but that was air-brushed out of reality. The Minister does not even report on that in the budget any more. Children under the age of nine were to be in classes of under 20. That promise has been forgotten about. When the Minister goes to the electorate, tells people this is what he will do and ignores them afterwards he devalues the currency of politics. That is a big problem I have in looking at this.

We will have to look hard at the issue I have been banging on about at every hand's turn, that is, delivering real efficiency in the way public services are run. The expenditure review system introduced in 1997 was supposed to have a rolling programme every three years when the entire amount of public spending would be scrutinised with a view to identifying efficiencies. That was allowed to rust and almost be abandoned under this Government's regime. It was reintroduced by the Minister last June in a very mealy-mouthed way. This is not the type of expenditure review we expected, that was built into the public service Act in 1997. We are paying for that failure. We are paying also for the failure of the Government to use benchmarking, a golden opportunity to reform delivery of public services at the front line so that there would less bureaucracy and more delivery. That opportunity was squandered. No serious reform proposals were put on the table by Government. In fact, there was no serious negotiation whatsoever around that issue, it was simply a question of paying the ATM machine as one prominent trade union leader and a Member of the House described it. That was another missed opportunity. In the area of health this can be seen in spades.

The Government started to spend money rapidly in the health area but it was not delivering results. The Minister said the problem was that managers were not close enough to the front line so the eight health boards were expanded to 11 health boards. This means there are many more managers close to the action. When this did not work the Government abolished the 11 health boards and created a new Health Service Executive, bringing in a whole new layer of management. Anyone who is seeking approval for a medical card will be aware that is the reality as three people are required to sign off on it where previously one was sufficient. We do not see delivery at the front line and, further, this body is not even accountable. Where is the drive for value for money, efficiency, and service delivery in any of this? The reality is this has passed the Government by.

The Government has had the soft option of being able to lie back on its couch and watch the money tumble in from the property boom and do nothing about reforming delivery. That is why people hurt at the front line. At the first test the HSE is closing beds, people who expected home care packages are not getting them and those in hospitals such as Beaumont, which cannot cope in its accident and emergency unit, are left there because the promised step-down facilities are not available. More people are left in expensive €1,000 per day beds when they should be in beds that cost €250 per day. Where is the economy in that? This is not delivery or value for money, driven by front-end needs of patients.

The Minister can speak about value for money frameworks and so on but this has not been consistently pursued. Nobody has been made responsible for targets at the front line and when things go wrong nobody is there to take responsibility, neither Ministers nor anybody further down the line. That is where we have been sold short. The spending bonanza is coming to an end. Since 2000 the Government's current spending has been at a rate 40% faster than the rate of growth in the economy. It has driven the proportion of GNP represented by current spending from less than 25% in 2000 to 31% today. That is a huge growth in the wedge of spending that has to be funded by taxation. It was being funded for a number of years by the golden goose laying eggs in the form of stamp duties, housing taxes, VAT and so on from the property boom. That golden goose has stopped laying and funding for those services will have to come from ordinary taxation. The tragedy is that we did not squeeze out the efficiency. Those golden years when money was available were not used to reform to provide a strong, well-functioning system. There are creaking systems in crucial areas such as health. We will rue the day we did not have a Government more alert and more hungry to deliver change and public service reform when it was needed.

I thank the Minister's officials, some of whom are present, for the courtesy of briefing me and colleagues on this new approach which I appreciate. I am more dismayed at what is not being revealed than what is being revealed. The Minister had an interesting analysis in his statement where he broke down the percentages. I cannot remember them exactly — 36% related to demographic change, another 35% to the impact of decisions already taken and there was other public service pay. I do not blame the officials but when I asked to see the background, the demographic spend and the carryover programmes in each Department, that information was not available. In his contribution the Minister produced figures, which I presume are categorical because they come from the Minister for Finance, but there is no backup.

If we are to have a meaningful debate on any of this spending we need to know the amount of money that is being provided for demographic growth in, say, the health area. In my area, an extra 8,000 people per year are leaning on the Mater and Beaumont structure, which is not capable of handling that number. I would like to have seen the demographic provision for extra service on the north side to deal with this population strain. No figures are available for demographic growth. The Minister asked for suggestions. I have many suggestions if he is serious about reforming Beaumont and the Mater, which are in a chronic state. He has to provide capacity and he cannot back out of that. There will have to be step-down capacity in order to manage what is a very expensive modern hospital in an efficient way. It should be possible to move people from beds into convalescence but that cannot be done in Beaumont. People wring their hands and ask why the accident and emergency unit in Beaumont is in crisis again. That is because it has nowhere to put patients who should be in convalescence. That is the reality. A facility that was due to open in November will not now open. The promises made are not being delivered, apparently, because of the latest round of cutbacks. This is short-sighted because it means more people will sit in the accident and emergency unit and more will suffer misadventure because they are not being seen.

We cannot have a meaningful debate until the Minister starts to put some of that information into the public domain so that we can have something like equality of information to debate the options. The Minister has claimed that this would accommodate the proposal from the Committee of Public Accounts. It is not fair to pretend that he is fulfilling the requirements of that committee's proposal. It stated it wanted existing levels of service, and new spending and tax decisions brought together. However, it also stated that the Dáil must have the opportunity to see the details early and have meaningful debate with ex-ante choices, which we would be in a position to amend. This would mean that the Minister would propose options for improvement in particular areas and we could have a meaningful debate on which options are best.

This is not that sort of debate. We are not being given the opportunity to veer money around and consider, for example, what is the possible provision for step-down beds next year or whether we could make more room for step-down beds so that we could run expensive hospitals like Beaumont more efficiently without the need for people to sit in accident and emergency departments. We cannot have that debate because the Minister is not giving us the information to allow us to do so. The Minister knows as well as I do that this debate is simply going through the motions and we will have a vote tomorrow night. In no sense are we engaged in scrutiny if we are supposed to be scrutinising the options and weighing up the better thing to do. If that is what the Minister wants, as implied in the proposal of the Committee of Public Accounts, then we need a completely different system from what he is offering us.

The notion is that budget secrecy is contained on the other side of the House with the Minister having all the wisdom, which we wait to drop from his lips like pearls to be picked up from the ground. That is not the way a modern society works any more and our budgeting process must change to reflect that. We want to have a meaningful impact on the choices taken. This change of bringing tax and spending together will only be cosmetic without that facility for advance debate on the choices. The Minister keeps saying he is only delivering on the recommendation of the Committee of Public Accounts. However, he is selling short the vision of that committee. On budget day it will be the same with a big list of spending, another big list of taxation and no real debate. It will be a case of take it or leave it. The Whips will be brought in, we will vote and it will all be over. It will be the same as it has always been and it is not a meaningful change.

I would like to have seen some of the proposals from Fine Gael's document. For instance five-year costings for any new spending proposal should be published in advance. We should also see five-year performance targets for the programme so that we can see what it should deliver. For example next year we will have a new nursing homes subvention scheme that will be entirely different from any we have ever had. We ought to have five-year projections of what it will cost, who will be the beneficiaries and how it will develop. I am sure it will be a good thing to do and is a well thought out idea. However, we still need to see the costings. From past experience we have seen good ideas like this, for example medical cards for certain categories of people, balloon out of control because no one felt the obligation to carry out accurate five-year costings. That should be part of the meaningful process in which we are now engaged. We know that change is coming up the track: it is a Government decision.

When I asked the very worthy Department of Finance officials if I could see the Government decisions that have been taken and details of their required funding for next year, I was advised that was a political decision. However, these are decisions the Government has already taken and they are in the public domain. While I accept it is a political decision as to whether they will proceed, what they will cost is not a political decision and we should be entitled to that detail to allow us to start to have more meaningful debate. However, that is not what we are getting. We have been sold a pup if the Minister believes this represents meaningful reform.

I welcome the output statements. However, we have been down this road before with the strategy statements. The Departments of Education and Science, and Transport are the worst in this regard. What they regard as output statements are input statements. The Department of Education and Science will state we are to have more teachers. However, it does not outline what this will deliver. Output statements should address what will happen to literacy and dropout rates, and what will happen to children with special needs. That is what an output statement is. Outcomes and outputs are different from inputs, which are teachers and, in the transport area, buses and tracks. Output statements on transport relate to what happens to passenger numbers and the modal split. This is what we ought to see if we want our output statements to trigger meaningful debate about spending choices and how well Departments are doing. However, with some notable exceptions, many big Departments are just producing documentation that does not stand up to real performance indicators. The Minister for Finance would not accept them as performance indicators. What is being done in the UK is light years ahead of what is being done here.

Nonetheless I thank the Minister for an interesting debate and I look forward to the next phase of this budget cycle.

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