Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Deputy for giving me nine minutes and thank the Labour Party for sharing time with me. If everybody in the Labour Party and Sinn Féin got on as well as Deputy Penrose and I, we would have a far better left Opposition in place. Perhaps it is to do with our mutual small business background which is our connection.

The Fine Gael motion is too sweeping and unfortunately it represents a missed opportunity. We could have been having a very constructive debate here this evening. The motion states: "That Dáil Éireann calls on the Government to freeze all charges on businesses until 2012." Let us consider some of the businesses to which we might refer in that very wide sweeping statement, including Intel, Diageo which owns Guinness, and the Kerry Group. Those companies can well afford to pay to local authority rates and whatever moderate increase might apply. The motion as it stands would allow those businesses to not pay their fair share. While most businesses suffer to some degree, these guys can certainly afford to pay and should pay.

The other major impact would be on the funding for local government. We know that central government has simply not been funding local authorities for decades, which is having a significant negative impact. If it were not for all the building and planning levies flowing into the coffers of local authorities in the past decade they would have continued to remain on their knees. As that building boom came the local authority system grew with it, but now it is in serious difficulty because of where we find ourselves. Local authorities are acutely aware of the difficulties that particularly small and medium-sized enterprises face.

I regularly hear councillors talking about the prospect of reducing rates in some cases. If the motion is carried, all of those rates will be frozen and the local authorities will not have that little bit of leeway in any cases where there is a bit of give and take for them to reduce rates in some cases or even to introduce some kind of opportunity for those businesses that are genuinely viable but are going through very difficult conditions because of the economic crisis to, for example, postpone their rates for the time being. I am concerned that it would have a very negative impact on them.

The motion should have been more flexible thereby allowing us to have this discussion about that category of entrepreneur, the genuine small to medium-sized enterprise undergoing difficulty but where all the fundamentals are sound and so that it could employ three or four people - for example a small printer - up to something of the scale referred to by Deputy Penrose, the Dublin Meath Growers Society with almost 500 people employed. There should be some flexibility in dealing with those. We all know of these small enterprises. They are in every city, town and village. We deal with them and make representations on their behalf on a regular basis. Those entrepreneurs need a stimulus package from Government, which brings me to the Government amendment.

Unfortunately that amendment engages in unwarranted back patting, which is not appropriate given the state of the economy that has been presided over for a very long time by the larger party in the Government which brought us to where we are now. The amendment "commends the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government for calling on local authority managers to implement measures open to local authorities to support new or existing enterprises in their areas by, for example, reducing development contribution rates". It is all right for the Government to call on local authority managers to do that, but what is the Government doing to help those local authorities? As soon as we begin to examine it we see it is not doing anything.

The one thing missing from the debate on the economic crisis to date has been a stimulus package for enterprise to assist job retention and creation. There is a minor package for a certain limited category of business which is exporting but it is far too limited. We know about the Government's NAMA enterprise, to which I may have time to return in a few moments. Its main economic drive of slash and burn will squeeze the life out of the economy. It is taking the few bob out of people's pockets and thus crippling the economy completely.

Let us consider just one area where that is happening. Only half of the education capital budget has been spent so far. Some €391 million of an €840 million package is still sitting there. What would that money have done for the economy had the political masters in that Department gone out there and made it happen? It would have been a great boost to the construction sector to get out there and start building those schools. As it is one of the most labour intensive sectors of the economy, with that would have come a substantial employment opportunity. However, that has not happened. I laughed when I saw the Minister for Education and Science in the House earlier with three Ministers of State beside him. I jocosely asked him if he thought he needed a few more Ministers of State to make this thing happen and put a bit of drive into it. Four Ministers of State and a senior Minister should be able to get the push behind that critical spending that would act as something of an economic stimulus for the economy and that sector as well as providing better conditions for children. Some children have been in portakabins for their entire primary and possibly secondary education. We know the difficulty teachers as well as students have in working in those conditions owing to the poor heat and light and all that goes with it.

I wish to finish up with the issue of NAMA. We will be dealing with Committee Stage of the NAMA Bill in the Dáil Chamber later this week and next week. In dealing with anything to do with the economy whether it is this motion or anything else we must refer to NAMA. Unfortunately it is a bailout for bankers. Bankers are being bolstered with taxpayers' money. The Bill makes provision for NAMA to support developers to finish their projects. There is no money for enterprise but there is money for the developers to finish their housing schemes at a time when there are at least 50,000 new homes without buyers and banks are not lending money to people to buy homes. This is what NAMA is about. It is about time the Government reconsidered what it is doing regarding the economy, banking and enterprise. If it did so and listened to some debate from this side of the House we would all be much better off.

See this speech in context