Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

While an open day was held at the Tullamore hospital before the election, it is only providing very limited day services. The poor conditions in the old hospital have been highlighted in the media. At one stage, patients in the hospital had to go for a week without hot water, yet Deputy Curran is shouting.

Sinn Féin wanted a small number of key commitments addressed as part of this budget. They included delivering the 3,000 beds needed and increasing the medical card threshold to €250 per week for 2008 with a commitment to increase it to the level of the minimum wage over the next two years. This budget should have contained a commitment to provide the revenue to roll out the cervical cancer screening programme State-wide in 2008. We also demanded an end to the misuse of public money in the form of tax breaks for private hospitals and the co-location land gift scheme.

If the cervical cancer screening programme had been rolled out, it would have incurred a cost upfront but we should consider all the savings that could have been made with regard to palliative care, trauma for patients and days taken off work. Even an accountant would have worked out that it would be better to put in place the preventative care rather than let people suffer what they must currently suffer.

A key financial pressure on many families is the cost of child care. In particular, the ability of low income parents to participate in paid employment is being threatened by the changes to the child care subvention scheme which the Government is set to introduce. Across the State, many community child care projects are under threat of closure. It is deeply disappointing that this was not a priority in the Minister's budget speech.

For example, the Larchville and Lisduggan community child care project in Waterford city, which benefited from €1 million in capital funding and which it is hoped will be open in January, will be under huge pressure because of the changes. In the constituency of my colleague, Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, child care workers at Farney community crèche in Carrickmacross have predicted that, if this scheme goes ahead, many parents will pull out of the crèche because they cannot afford it, and it will have to double its fees. Like other such child care facilities, it could be forced to close, resulting in loss of jobs and services which allow parents to go to work.

Sinn Féin had two key child care demands it wanted to see delivered in this budget. The first was the introduction of a universal pre-school session of 3.5 hours per day, five days a week for all children in the year before they go to school — the National Economic and Social Forum costed this at €136 million. The second demand was the suspension of the child care subvention scheme and extension of the equal opportunities scheme by six months, pending reform of the subvention scheme and entailing detailed consultation with child care providers using the scheme around the State. These measures should have formed a core part of this budget.

With regard to housing, the property market slowdown should have prompted the Government to do what it should have done a decade ago, namely, shift policy towards funding the local authorities to provide social and affordable housing. This budget does not go far enough on social and affordable housing. If more young working people had access to social and affordable housing, this would create more disposable income, which would stimulate the economy rather than having it paid to banks and building societies. Such a shift in Government housing policy would also keep up levels of employment in construction.

Housing should be seen as part of our essential infrastructure, not just as a market for land speculators and property developers. It is also reasonable to borrow to increase the social housing stock. In advance of the budget, Sinn Féin demanded that 12,000 social housing units be constructed in 2008.

Our economy has come on leaps and bounds over the past two decades — I willingly accept this fact. However, we have failed to use the successes of recent years to build for future competitiveness. We are beginning to feel the squeeze with regard to our lack of infrastructure, knowledge capacity and flexibility, and will find it difficult to adapt our economy for future competition. For too long, the Government enjoyed the benefits of an economy based on low costs and low taxes. Developments in China, India and eastern Europe mean we can no longer hope to compete in that kind of market, nor should we.

While we are still competitive, our rankings are slipping. Since 2002, we have fallen 17 places to 22nd in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness rankings. Our increases in consumption and investment, rather than strong export growth, the slowdown in Irish productivity growth, particularly in high-tech sectors, the contribution of net exports to economic growth being small or negative in recent years and the high reliance on the construction sector for employment have all led to this drop. We have seen a slide-off in both the construction and manufacturing sectors and, worse, we have seen parts of the country become economic blackspots.

East Cork recently lost the proposed Amgen development and in Waterford 470 jobs were lost in Waterford Crystal. In Galway yesterday, we saw the loss of 500 jobs from Abbott Ireland. Recent CSO figures confirm Tralee is one of the State's worst unemployment blackspots. There are 1,300 people out of work in the north Kerry town – an unemployment rate of 14.2%. The Government and its employment agencies have done little or nothing to bring replacement industries to that area. Not one job has been created by the IDA in north Kerry in the past five years, which is some indictment. This neglect of the west and south west can also be seen in the decision to allow Aer Lingus to move from Shannon, which will have a devastating effect on the region.

We need to be more innovative, not traditional, to ensure we are developing the kind of economy we want for the future. Sinn Féin has consistently argued that ending the partition of our country will contribute to the building of a strong competitive economy. Much of the business community, North and South, is behind us in this demand.

Duplicate government and public service structures, an unnecessary administrative burden on those wishing to do business in both jurisdictions and two currencies mean we are competing with ourselves for economic investment and development. Ireland's physical infrastructure, North and South, also remains a source of competitive disadvantage. Successive Governments over the boom years to date have failed to introduce the infrastructure needed to build competitiveness. We built a motorway that could not handle traffic capacity around Dublin and then handed it over to private operators who profited from it. In fact, it took the authorities ten years to cop on that the M50 needed an extra lane.

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