Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The economy today is smaller than predicted in the first Fine Gael-Labour Party budget, by more than €5 billion. The Government has never introduced a measure to which it has attached a specific jobs target. In this context, claims to be delivering on jobs are clearly untrue. The Government is not creating jobs; businesses are creating jobs using the underlying strengths of the Irish people and an upturn in international growth. The Government is a bystander, focusing on public relations rather than on making an impact.

The Action Plan for Jobs 2014, which the Taoiseach and Tánaiste have mentioned again today, is the perfect example of a strategy that is all about claiming credit for job creation rather than actually creating jobs. Like its two predecessors, this year's jobs action plan is primarily made up of actions which either will have a marginal impact or were happening anyway. In some cases they go much further and are crudely cynical. The best example of this is the proposal to establish 31 new local enterprise offices. What the Government has actually done is to close every county enterprise board and cut the funding for local enterprise support. It will rearrange offices and then go on a spree of opening them. Every one of those openings will be a sham. A cut in local enterprise services will be celebrated as an increase, a tactic that would not be out of place in George Orwell's 1984.

This is not the first time we have seen such cynicism; it is in every year's action plan. For example, last year we were told that seven new world-class research centres were being created. What was not said was that each of the centres had already existed for between five and ten years and many other centres that operated at a world-class level were being closed to provide the extra funding for them. There is a wider and more strategic problem in this effort to sell the message of a government delivering a huge boost to employment. It fails to acknowledge the deep strengths that the economy already had. It puts short-term politics ahead of a long-term message for the country. This is not a good message for Ireland.

We can see this strategy at work in the Government's reaction to the results from IDA Ireland last year. It was another good year for the IDA. Implementing a strategy devised over the long term, it has focused on key industries and key types of employment. As it pointed out in its own press release, it was the fifth year in a row that it had delivered a net positive result. Even in the worst part of the recession inward investment remained strong, and most of the new projects are with firms with which we have had a long-term engagement. By contrast, the Government's press release on exactly the same figures ignored this strength and tried to claim that all progress was new and directly linked to Ministers. If the action plan for jobs represents the Government's major priority then this will be a problem for it. When one takes the time to look behind the presentation one finds some very interesting detail. In one action it is proposed to arrange research which, Ministers hope, will establish links, where possible, between actions in the action plan and outcomes. In other words, while Ministers already claim to be delivering jobs, their own document says they do not know whether this is the case.

In order to make jobs a real priority, the Government should adopt a new approach to key issues. First, it needs to recognise that we are seeing a two-tier recovery. In areas in which the priority of the State over many years was to invest in skills and attract investment, job growth has been high and levels of pay have been high. However, in many other areas employment growth has been weak and conditions have been poor. The two largest elements of the employment figures are part-time work and SOLAS training places. We should not settle for this. The Government needs to push the financial system to return to proper levels of support for business. Credit is far too tight. The State-funded balances of the banks are sufficient to enable a return to levels of lending which can allow more businesses to survive and grow. Domestic demand will not recover until lending returns, and Government should move from its position of leaving it to the banks and settling for weak targets.

It also needs to get serious about the large overhang of mortgage and family debt that is imposing a huge social and economic burden throughout the country. My party has produced a succession of Bills and policy positions to tackle the problem and each one has been voted down by the Government in favour of its gradualist "leave it to the banks" approach. This week, again, it is refusing to give statutory protection to mortgage holders to prevent State-owned debt from being sold to non-regulated companies. For the past three years the Government has claimed it is prioritising the needs of people with mortgage and household debt problems, but it has stood by as the problem has deepened. For jobs and the economy, as well as for fundamental social reasons, a more aggressive approach to tackling mortgage and household debt should be, but is not, a priority for the Government.

This is the fourth month in a row that the Government has been giving "exclusive" comments to journalists about how cutting tax this year is a priority.

The Labour Party and Fine Gael have even started to attack each other about whose idea it was to cut taxes. It is time for the Government to stop the media campaign and to start to explain what it is considering. We have been promised an open budgetary process with genuine debate. Let us start with the promised priority of tax cuts. The Taoiseach's statement was short on specifics in this regard. Families are feeling the pressure on their disposable income and the Government's claim to have left this alone is completely untrue. This year the amount payable in property tax has been doubled and a range of other service cuts and charge increases have also impacted on disposable income. The campaign to withdraw discretionary medical cards is directly targeted at the squeezed middle.

Families with children with autism or other disabilities are particularly aggrieved. The Jack & Jill Children's Foundation which tries to help parents with the most severely ill babies and children in the State is appalled at the way in which medical cards have been withdrawn from such families.

Water charges are on the way. We do not know exactly when people will be told about the charges that are going to be imposed, but from 1 January 2015 families will face extra bills. Between now and June the Taoiseach will refuse to indicate how much they will be expected to pay in water charges. They will also be facing compulsory health insurance charges if the Government introduces universal health insurance, on which matter the lack of detail is stark. The Government's key tactic is to give a small amount back to cover up what it is taking away. If it genuinely wants to help the squeezed middle, it will have to outline all of the changes it proposes to make in charges and taxes.

Every independent study of the Government's fiscal policy has confirmed that it has taken a significantly more regressive approach to revenue raising. The one consistent element of the Government's policy is that ability to pay is not considered. Some people may be gullible enough to listen to its promise of tax relief, but the general public will not be fooled. The medium-term economic plan launched in December contained less detail than any recent multi-annual framework. It was written in a way that maximised political claims and minimised details. Instead of continuing the current campaign of trying to tell soft stories about tax cuts, I ask the Government to show us what spending cuts and revenue increases it is proposing in order to fund them. Show us the true cost of water charges, compulsory health insurance and property taxes. If it continues to speak about tax cuts without showing the details, people will be justified in seeing it as being more interested in its own fortunes than the squeezed middle.

In the past month the internal Cabinet debate about compulsory health insurance has been fought out in a series of unattributed leaks, as well as a public fight-back by the Minister for Health who claimed in a signed article that his new system would cost less, deliver more and be the end of problems. The Taoiseach reiterated these claims at the weekend, but it appears that there is no basis to them whatsoever. In the absence of details of costs, services to be covered and premiums charged, it is dishonest to make any claim about the new system. Compulsory health insurance has been the policy of both Government parties for over ten years, yet they expect us to believe they still do not how it would work. One thing that appears settled is that Fine Gael's preference to have the system controlled by for-profit insurers has prevailed. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has already estimated that the average cost of a policy under universal health insurance will be €1,600. The Labour Party's plans specified that the insurance companies would be State-owned and not-for-profit, the predominant model elsewhere. How the Labour Party can stand over this defeat on a core ideological principle has yet to be explained.

The Government's priority for the health service during the next year is to keep progressing towards the Minister's new system. If this happens, further chaos is inevitable. The HSE service plan which was censored by the Cabinet cannot be delivered with the current level of funding. This has been confirmed by the HSE's chief executive officer. Throughout the country patients are seeing the impact in curtailed services. To cover this up, the Government has fixed the figures by changing the way waiting lists are compiled to adopt a much easier target and redefining what is meant by admitting a patient. It has reduced nursing and medical cover for each patient on wards and ramped up the programme of shutting services which the Taoiseach personally promised to keep open. The introduction of free GP care for children under the age of six years is a stated priority for this year, but the implementation and cost of this promise are becoming less clear by the day. Assuming that it is actually implemented, it appears that "free" is now to be defined as "with a charge". We have another scheme which does not do what has been promised and which is to be funded by cutting other badly needed services. The priority for the health service in the next year should have been an honest approach to mounting problems, instead of more spin and denials, alongside damaging and costly changes which will ultimately lead to an open-ended health tax.

The Government has claimed it will engage in a genuine consultation process. A genuine consultation process would include the possibility of listening to people and abandoning ill-thought out privatisation and costly changes. During the coming year Irish Water will come closer to full operation and introducing charges. It has made a submission on how much it wants to charge, but because there has been no commensurate reduction in other taxes, these charges will represent an additional tax. Larger families are likely to be hardest hit by water charges. The Government has ensured the final figures for the new charges will not come out until after the local elections. If it is convinced that its new agency is a good thing, it should immediately publish Irish Water's submission on its desired charges. This would show people the full agenda and impact of the scheme.

It is disappointing that restoring confidence in the administration of justice is not a priority for the year. At the weekend the Taoiseach not only backed the Minister for Justice and Equality, he also applauded his behaviour. In spite of the fact that it has been necessary to establish three reviews of actions taken under the Minister, that he has used confidential information received from the Garda Commissioner to cast a slur on an opponent and that he has shown no interest in how another Deputy was targeted through leaks or how GSOC investigations have been ignored and hindered, the Taoiseach has decided that party loyalty is more important. This does not auger well for how the Government will handle the independent reviews when they are delivered. It suggests that, regardless of what he does, the Minister's past loyalty to the Taoiseach is more important than his current behaviour. As the Minister is allowed to operate independent of Cabinet or Oireachtas oversight, the legal priority for the year ahead will be his scheme of changes to the legal profession. This is not reform. It has at its heart changes which no one is seeking and which will bring no benefit. Not one piece of research has been produced to support the claims made on reduced costs, whereas the conclusive evidence shows that access to the top legal talent will be more restricted and elitist. Once again, the Labour Party has been silent on a deeply regressive measure.

In the past three years the Government's neglect of issues concerning Northern Ireland has become increasingly obvious. The Government is not to blame for the recent problems, but it has chosen to take the role of bystander, rather than active participant. Leaving the peace process in the hands of two parties focused on partisan interests has failed. Levels of trust are falling and, worst of all, opportunities for growth and reconciliation are being missed. If the Government is sincere about Northern Ireland, it must make it a priority to re-engage on all issues and tell the British Government to fulfil its commitments about the past, including, in particular, the Finucane case and the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. It will also stop focusing on holding formal meetings and start to develop concrete proposals for new North-South activity. Funding the Narrow Water Bridge project should be an immediate priority and its neglect by the Government is nothing short of disgraceful.

European policies played a central role in Ireland's economic crisis. We have not yet received full justice for our case. Having declared victory on at least three occasions in the past two years, it is time for the Government to be open and honest about what it is seeking on relief of bank related debt and other issues. This week in the Dáil three days have been allocated to debating a set of Government priorities which have not been set out in advance. The health service plan has not even been debated. The housing plans were meant to be debated two weeks ago, but we have not yet had an opportunity to consider them. That demonstrates the farcical nature of this debate. All we have before us is a set of political set-piece speeches driven by public relations rather than public policy. The real priority for the year should be an end to the strategy of putting spin first, an engagement with the social and economic pressures facing the people and an acceptance that policy must change if we are to tackle the two-tier recovery under way. Unfortunately, nothing said by either the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste suggests they understand this.

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