Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Members from the Technical Group for allowing me some of their time to speak on the Industrial Development (Forfás Dissolution) Bill 2013. Unlike some of my colleagues I will not be jumping up and down and I do not want to burst the Minister of State's bubble. However, I wish to highlight some problems with the Bill. It sounds great to talk about the dissolution of an organisation and integrating it into something else. It might give the impression that it is good and will save money. Unfortunately, the Government's track record in saving money is abysmal. I note the Minister of State laughing, but I point to the debacle with Irish Water. We had a perfectly good system of taking care of our water through the local authorities. All they needed was more investment to stop the water leaking. However, instead the Government set up what is probably one of the greatest quangos of all time and nobody knows what the total bill will come to.

The Government also decided to abolish town councils. While it sounded great when the Government's PR system announced it was getting rid of town councillors, it forgot to tell people that we were also losing town engineers, the town clerk and destroying an entire system. We now have to close some offices and build new ones. I am reliably informed - I also see it on the ground - it will cost hundreds of millions of euro, which have not been accounted for yet.

The Government has a poor track record in centralising and changing things. I wish to highlight another Government decision that blew up in its face, the centralisation of the processing of medical cards.

We had a great system whereby people were able to interact, and local community welfare officers could discuss cases on the telephone. In County Kerry they were processed in Tralee. The Government decided to remove it from Tralee and bring it to Dublin. That was supposed to be a good idea to save money and give better service delivery. Unfortunately, it does not. The Government thought it was a good idea to centralise the call centres for emergency services. It did away with the local ones in Cork and Kerry and all around the country. They are being shut down and the Government is centralising them in Dublin, where they are run from a fire station on which the Government did some renovations and put in a computer system that is out of date. I asked for an independent safety audit on the building but none was carried out. The Government's answer was that it did an internal audit. In other words, it audited itself. If I thought this was going to work, to be of benefit to our SMEs, save money, create jobs, and help small businesses I would be the first to say the Government is correct. Unfortunately, however, I do not see that happening. Instead the Government's decisions cost a fortune and the debacles in which it is involved every day are getting worse.

Running a small business at present is extremely difficult. As someone who all his life has been involved in small business and in creating jobs in a small way, I see, as do my friends and constituents who are trying to keep people in employment, the enormous obstacles in our way. Any person who wants to advance a business must have finance. The Irish people, young couples, have paid to bail out our banks but when people want to expand their businesses or perhaps to diversify and invest in their small companies they cannot get money from the banks. The Minister of State, his senior Minister and the Minister for Finance should have the continuous aim and objective of ensuring that the banks will give capital to people. I am not talking about huge sums of money, such as happened during the boom when people who looked for €100,000 left with €320,000 plus something for a little holiday. I am not talking about nonsense. I am talking about people being able to acquire necessary finance to improve their business. Until finance is freed up for the SMEs they will be stifled and held back. That is one of the biggest problems facing employers at present.

I would love to be able to compliment the IDA and say that it has done great work in Kerry but I cannot. Any time we hear a jobs announcement it is in Dublin because the weight of Ministers is concentrated in Dublin, or Limerick, where the Minister for Finance comes from, or in Cork. The jobs are not coming to Donegal or County Kerry. How could the Government leave the biggest opportunity we have had in County Kerry? I compliment Deputy Spring, who is here, and other Members from Kerry because we wear the one shirt when it comes to this issue. Shannon LNG is one of the most important priorities for every politician from County Kerry. Until recently the Government stated that it could not interfere or get involved. There will be a massive injection of capital during the construction phase and afterwards in its operation.

It is a no-brainer for the Government to get off the fence and say that it will remove the obstacles. That is what it means to be in government and to be a Minister. The Government has a huge majority and is there to run the country. There are people willing to come into North Kerry to create much-needed jobs but the Government is dithering and messing around. I do not see why it will not get off the fence to support the people. We all know that the problem is that the company is being asked to pay for infrastructure it will never use. That is crazy. It is nonsensical. Will the Minister of State, as a matter of urgency, bring the LNG issue to the Government? I am not imposing it on the Minister of State but he is here to take the debate. Will he ensure that the IDA picks up the pace and realises that there are people in Ireland who live outside Dublin, Limerick and Cork? I have nothing against my good neighbours in Cork but we want to see the IDA create some jobs in County Kerry because over the years its track record has not been very good.

When someone sets out to start a business every agency or quango in the State comes down on top of them, whether it is the HSE or the local authority. We understand that people have to pay their rates and bills but some of the bureaucracy and red tape put in the way of small business people is ridiculous. Ireland today does not encourage small business people. I am very disappointed to have to say this because over the years small businesses have been the backbone of the country. We started with small farmers then people became involved in the tourism industry. We should be nurturing and encouraging them.

In case the Minister of State thinks that I am all negative I compliment the Government effort on The Gathering, which was a huge success. We should build on that but we should also consider the people who provided the services and ask whether our tourism operators, hoteliers, guesthouses and restaurants all put on a good show for those who came to the country. Of course they did. They put on an excellent show. They gave excellent service and value but the people working in these sectors are competing unfairly with NAMA hotels. How can one encourage someone in any part of the country to compete with a NAMA-operated hotel that puts them under severe pressure? These are family businesses in many instances. The majority of what I would call "real" hoteliers are born into the business. Their parents and grandparents were hoteliers. These young people have taken over the businesses but unlike their grandparents, they are at an unfair disadvantage because they have to compete with the hotel down the road operated by NAMA, which does not have to make a profit. I saw an advertisement recently for bed and breakfast for two people, at €48 for one night. That is not sustainable. It is not sensible. One cannot say that is great value. That is operating at a loss. It is only trying to keep a room full. The people I represent, the real hoteliers, have to try to make a profit. They are giving excellent value but the Minister of State should consider what they are up against.

I believe a time will come when the Government will have to make a decision on this. While I never want to see a door closing, there are hotels that are distorting the market because they are in NAMA. They cannot be allowed to continue like this. They could be used for other purposes but they should not be in competition with indigenous hotels that have been in business for years and have created much-needed employment. As with other issues I have raised, the Government should come off the fence on this issue.

To come back to the Bill, the reason I am firing these warning shots and not jumping up and down like some of my colleagues, who are giving it a wholehearted welcome, is because of the Government's disastrous track record. This is similar to the decision that was taken many years ago to close the rural rail network, which certainly cost us billions in lost tourism and investment for industries that were lost because the roads were not able to cater for the traffic of goods. Time will prove that the decisions taken by this Government, such as the abolition of the town councils and the establishment of Irish Water, and the continuous drive to close everything that is local and centralise it, will cost billions and will hurt the local person, the man or woman living in a housing estate in a town or rural area.

I have heard commentators say it is great to get rid of the town councils and that fewer councillors will mean fewer bills, but time will prove it to be a very costly move. The county councillors and town councillors are, as far as I am concerned, the backbone of this country when it comes to politics. Any politician worth his salt in this House had to serve his time on a local authority before he was elected as a Deputy. I believe it should be compulsory that a person should have served on a local authority because, to me, a good sign of a politician is the person who has given the longest time on a local authority before they are elected to this House. That person will be a better politician in the future than the person who might have been parachuted in without having served their apprenticeship, as I would call it, on a local authority. If people want to learn what real politics is about, they should serve on a local authority. Many of those elected to this House without being on a local authority beforehand were here a very short time because they did not know what it was all about. What it is all about is taking care of the people and their needs, and ensuring proper and prudent care of the finances of our State.

When the Taoiseach is questioned by those on this side of the House, all he can do is give a history lesson as to the mistakes of previous Governments. Of course, previous Governments most certainly made mistakes, but this Government said when it came into office that it would do everything right. When it was introducing the property tax, the Government's mantra was that it would set up the tax but that people would afterwards have better delivery of services in their locality. However, it neglected to tell the people it would do a U-turn afterwards whereby 80% of the money is now going to the establishment of Irish Water. The irony of it all is that the Government got money from people in a tax and it used it to set up another tax to hit them again. People could have lived with the property tax if it was fair and if they could see better services locally, but they cannot. There are broken lights and footpaths which are not being replaced and roads falling into disrepair which are not being repaired. Despite this, the Government talks about better delivery of local services.

Town councils are being abolished. How can the Government call that a better delivery of service in any town? I have to talk about the great town of Killarney and the massive strides that have been made there over the years by good town councillors working in conjunction with the Tidy Towns committee and the local chamber of commerce, pulling it all together and ending up with the excellent product that is the town of Killarney. That is replicated throughout the country. What is the Government's answer to that? It is to disband the town council and see what will happen after that. This will not help these towns. To come back to the SMEs, it is not going to help businesses. Chambers of commerce have worked hand in hand with town councils over the years. I have continually made the point, since the Government announced it was going to abolish town councils, that there is a wealth of experience on which the Government will miss out. It has had highly respectable people from all sectors - Independents, the Labour Party, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil-----

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