Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Budget 2015 has one objective - to secure our economic recovery. This recovery is under way because of the choices were made by the Government and the extraordinary resilience and stamina the people have displayed during the traumas of the past seven years. I have listened attentively to what Members have said and the particular points they have made about issues of concern about what the Government is or is not doing.

Deputy Cowen made the point that what we need to do is drill down. What we also need to do is step back and look at where the country stands at the moment. When this Government came into office, our country was in a bailout programme. It is no longer in a bailout programme. It was the first member of the eurozone to exit a bailout programme successfully, having been the second country into a programme. This was a prospect that many people doubted was possible to achieve but it has been achieved. When we come into government, over 200,000 jobs had been lost over the previous two to three years. Since the Action Plan for Jobs has been created and launched, over 70,000 jobs have been created. When we came into office, no bank or other country in the world would lend to our country - nobody would lend to us. We now find ourselves in the situation where our country is able to fund itself independently to deliver as many of the needs of our citizens as we can at the moment, and this will give us the ability to do a better job in the future.

There is one question we have to address amidst the legitimate areas of concern that Deputies raise, and it is as follows. Are the prospects for our country better now than they were when this Government came into office in 2011? Do we find ourselves with a brighter horizon? Do we find ourselves with the ability to chart a better way forward? While we all know the horrendous difficulties that people still have, and the huge problems they face in their daily lives, as we stand now, do we find ourselves in a place where we have a better chance of alleviating those difficulties and rising to those challenges than we did when we brought in our first budget in 2011? I do not need to tell anybody who has the privilege of being an elected representative that the only people who will make their minds up on that question are the people we serve. Therefore, the only question we have to answer is this: have we done our best with the choices that were available to us at each point and with the resources that were available to our country then? I contend that, in this and previous budgets, we made the best choices we could at that time and we made the best use of the resources that were available to us. However, these were choices and decisions that were opposed at all times by the Deputies of the Opposition.

Let us look in some detail at the sectors which I have the privilege of representing, for example, let us look at the contribution tourism has made to the recovery of our country. The Minister of State, Deputy Coffey's point about the Sinn Féin proposal is absolutely correct. Deputy Stanley quoted what Mr. Noonan said on budget day but the Minister spoke after Sinn Féin had made its budgetary proposals available to the public. The reality is that Sinn Féin forgot about the 9% VAT rate, just as it opposed the measures that were needed to fund its creation, which have directly enabled the creation of 30,000 jobs.

My Department's budget puts us in the fortunate position that we will be able to invest €954 million in capital projects next year. When we take away the one-off sources of funding that came into my Department last year, due to stimulus funding and due to the consequences of flooding and the bad weather of last year, that represents an increase of €50 million against the funding my Department had when it began its work last year.

Deputy Stanley raised an important point in regard to the status and quality of our local, regional and national roads. Next year, we will have funding of €598 million to deal with these difficulties. These hundreds of millions of euro are sums we should never take for granted. The fact we now have the ability to invest this in our roads is a consequence of the decisions that were made by the Government and the bravery and stamina of Irish people across a horrendous period. It shows how far we have come. We need to remember, as we do, that Fianna Fáil ruined our economy. We need to remember that Sinn Féin said it would never recover. Moreover, with a few honourable exceptions, the Independent Members of the House either do not have any economic policies at all or the economic policies they have contradict each other.

Let us look at what this budget will deliver in the area of public transport. As I said yesterday, I will be able to honour the commitment I made to public transport companies during the summer to maintain the level of PSO funding to them at €210 million after many periods in which that funding was cut. We will have the funding to proceed with projects such as Luas Cross City, a project which is on track and under budget, the opening of the Phoenix Park tunnel and the rollout of the Leap card system across cities and throughout our country to allow new people to participate in integrated public transport.

With regard to road transport, Deputy Cowen made a fair point about the need for balanced regional development, which Deputies and Ministers in government understand very well. Given the funding this budget has in place for roads development, we will be able to proceed with projects on the N7 and N11 from Arklow to Rathnew and we will deliver and complete the Newlands Cross project. Additional PPP projects such as the Gorey bypass are included in our funding and construction work will commence on 57 km of motorway and dual carriageway on the N17 and N18 from Gort to Tuam.

With regard to tourism, a point I have already touched on, budget 2015 saw the retention of the 9% VAT measure, which has directly fed through to the creation of over 30,000 jobs. This increase in employment has resulted in an additional €165 million of return to the Exchequer between the reduction in social welfare payments and associated and higher income tax returns due to more people being at work. I concur with the Minister, Deputy Noonan, that the reason for the lower rate of VAT is to ensure we offer tourists value for money and that more jobs are created. If hotels and restaurants stop doing this, the usefulness and role of the lower of VAT rate will be called into question. I want to recognise what those industries have done in making use of this rate to offer better pricing to tourists and to people who have taken the decision to stay at home to holiday, and also to ensure that this is fed directly into more jobs. Alongside this, we will have the ability to fund capital investment in 2015 in projects all over the country, including the Wild Atlantic Way, the Kilkenny Medieval Mile, Killarney House and the Dublin heritage trail.

We also have within our budget the need to respond to the needs of the aviation sector. We have the funding in place. We are in discussion with the European Commission regarding the next multi-annual programme for regional airports. We have the funding in place for the maritime transport sector, where very important work by the Irish Coast Guard can be maintained. The Government continues to have a very strong commitment to the development and deployment of our national ports policy.

I was very pleased yesterday to be able to announce, along with my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, the deployment of another round of sports capital programme funding, which will allow our voluntary athletes, and the people who give their time so generously to them all over the country, to have access to the facilities they deserve. This is the third round of sports capital funding we have announced since we came into government.

This is a budget that is fair and is focused on jobs. I have listened to what the Opposition Members have said. In the past, this Government has been criticised for being austerity fetishists - people who are rolling out austerity for its own good.

The reason we did that is because we were seeking to bring the public finances under control. Now as we take steps to encourage investment and nurture our recovery, we are accused by the Opposition of being wasteful and populist. The Opposition cannot have it both ways. It criticises our tax measures in this budget because it points out that they do not give back what people have lost since 2008. That is true because if we had done that, we would have endangered the very recovery the Opposition denies is under way. The Opposition then criticises what we are doing in spending arguing that we are not spending enough. In some cases, this is true.

I will end on this note. This is the first of a series of budgets that the Government is committed to bringing in. We are making progress and the work and contribution of my Department and the budget for this Department show the progress we have made and our commitment to make more in the future.

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