Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak briefly on the Finance Bill 2013 and on the Finance (Local Property Tax) (Amendment) Bill 2013. Like most people, it is not so much that I welcome the Bills' contents but I acknowledge the rationale behind them. There is an old country saying in respect of people who come into an inheritance that has been carefully gathered together over many years, which is that after a gatherer comes a scatterer. However, in respect of Ireland's current position, it is a case of after a scatterer comes a gatherer. Regrettably, the country's inheritance is the consequence of many years of untargeted and poorly-focused scattergun approaches to public expenditure, which, allied with a banking crisis and collapse, as well as a collapse in the country's tax base, has left us in our current position. In so far as I welcome the opportunity to speak, it is because this Bill provides a clear line of sight for members of the public who, it must be acknowledged, are suffering from the consequences of the economic recession and the difficult times in which we live. I believe that, inasmuch as they yearn for financial relief from the predicament in which they find themselves, they also yearn for some degree of certainty. Consequently, while the contents of this Bill will not be widely welcomed, they provide certainty both in respect of the current financial year and with regard to the medium-term horizon, with the advent of a property tax, water charges and so on.

I also make this point in the context of the current ongoing talks on a successor to the Croke Park agreement. There is a perception, which perhaps is being perpetuated by many colleagues on the Opposition benches, that the current Administration for some reason would be hostile towards public servants. There is not a family in the country that does not have someone who works in the public service or which has no relations who work as gardaí, teachers, in 24/7 Frontline Services Alliance-type roles or any other aspect of the public service, be it on the front line, back line, middle line or wherever. I acknowledge the country would not function without these people. Members must try to provide a clear line of sight in order that people know where they are going and how we are going to get out of it. Regrettably, one thing that has eluded us in recent years is the growth needed in the economy, allied to the necessary retrenchment that has taken place. While growth has occurred at very low levels, Ireland's problem has been that its export markets have been in recession, which has stymied its recovery prospects. This legislation contains something that will provide such a line of sight. While it is hoped to get out of the bailout agreement by the end of this year, so doing is not in any way a cause for jumping up and down or for celebrations because it merely is a case of moving from the intensive care unit to the critical care unit. Ireland still will be in an extremely difficult position, not so much because of the legacy debt and high levels of unemployment, which are the headline issues of its recession, but because there continues to be a highly significant gap between what the State raises from taxes each year and what is spent. This really is where the pain is for people on a daily basis. These remarks comprise a preliminary overview to a couple of observations I wish to make.

Much has been made about the requirement for a stimulus package and, certainly, in the context of employment and unemployment, this will be necessary. A mini-stimulus package was launched last year, which was very welcome and which addressed areas such as local authority expenditure on roads, school building programmes and so on. However, much more of this is required and in this context, I wish to encourage the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and their Government colleagues to acknowledge that the biggest crisis facing householders today is the mortgage crisis. If one takes it that more than 100,000 mortgages are in considerable difficulty and arrears, relief of approximately €100 per week for each of those mortgage households would result over a year in half a billion euro of additional expenditure being released into the economy. I acknowledge that while €100 goes nowhere near what is required, half a billion euro will go nowhere near to sinking the banks' recovery. The State has equipped the banking institutions, and the pillar banks in particular, with significant resources to deal with this issue. Moreover, the legislative framework now is in place to deal with insolvency and lesser levels of unaffordable debt. It really is unacceptable that to date, there has been no significant willingness by the individual banks to address this issue. In acknowledging what the Government has achieved in respect of the demise of Anglo Irish Bank and the promissory notes, I ask it to accept this is an issue of equal significance to ordinary householders. People may well ask what was the gain for them in respect of the promissory note deal and the truth is, relatively speaking, probably very little because it is not additional money available to the Government to spend but is less money it is obliged to borrow. However, this would be a significant issue for individual householders and would be a boon to the local economy. It would be a stimulus package by another name.

That is something the Government needs to move urgently to the top of its priority list. There are no easy solutions and I understand why banks do not come out with headline figures for debt write-downs and say, "We will write off 40% of our loan book" and so on. This has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and moral hazard is an issue, given the "can pay, won't pay" issue. I urge the Government to roll up its sleeves on that issue.

On a related issue, we often celebrate in the House our success in targeting FDI. This is a mobile commodity and we are fortunate that we secure a significant element of such investment. More than 700 US companies are based in Ireland employing 115,000 people. That is not to be trifled with and we punch way above our weight in the context of competition on the global markets to attract such investment. I was inclined to tiptoe around one issue in this regard and I had been in contact with the IDA and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation but it will reach a crisis point soon. It is the availability of suitable accommodation for companies that may be willing to relocate to Ireland. I come from a provincial town in Cork and I acknowledge not all of the multinationals can be relocated to such towns but we need a critical mass of infrastructure to be made available to the IDA to market the country appropriately. It is regrettably the case that in Cork and many other provincial cities advance factories, as they used to be known, are not in place. We need to move on that and I hope NAMA will play a role in financing and rezoning lands they control.

I welcome the fuel rebate and its extension to transport operators, which is an acknowledgement that the tourism sector, in particular, has a significant role to play. It has been one of our success stories and, as Deputy Flanagan said, in the context of The Gathering, it can be built on.

I hope the officials will bring the issue of the tax free status of income from forestry to the attention of the Minister for Finance. Some tax free shelters are being phased out but there is an issue with reducing this threshold to €80,000 because it will impact on the flow of forestry goods to the market, which, in turn, could impact on employment in timber processing, etc. Five-year averaging needs to be considered rather than adopting a single approach to that.

I am very dissatisfied with the public procurement issue in the OPW. It is displacement by another name, which is being dressed up well in the context of the savings it is hoped to generate but I am not satisfied at all that displacing a local employer on the basis of using a single supplier of, for example, books to schools or janitorial services to Garda stations and schools is necessarily good. We need more of a regional emphasis in this regard and a weighting needs to be provided for in the tendering process for companies that are committed to producing Irish or EU goods as opposed to imports from outside the Union, which could displace employers and throw their employees on the live register.

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