Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue. I welcome the announcement yesterday by the Government of the establishment of a national economic dialogue. It is long overdue. I welcome the fact that there will be stakeholder consultation but, sadly, this House, Dáil Éireann, the national Parliament, is being sidelined.

Fine Gael's 2010 document, Reinventing Government, stated: "Ireland needs to move away from the current over-centralised "command and control" model of government". Instead, what we are seeing is matters getting worse rather than better. Decisions will still be made by the gang of four - the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. Decisions will still be rubber-stamped by the Cabinet, and they will still be rammed through Dáil Éireann, which continues to bicker and be ineffective.

We are a long way short of what was outlined in that reforming document, Reinventing Government, where specific proposals on how an all-inclusive budget process would be operated was outlined by the Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton. What we are doing is cementing the silo thinking in the public service management and in Government. Is it not time that we had some joined-up thinking and started to get the basic issues right? Is it not time to break out of the shackles that is the management culture within the public service in terms of "It is not my problem. It is not my job. It is someone else's issue to be solved"? I will give the House two examples in that regard.

We had the introduction of the local property tax. The Revenue Commissioners spent €0.5 million setting up a paper-based system to process those applications from people who cannot access the Internet because they do not have broadband or who are not IT literate. If that had been handed over to the post office network across the country it would help to maintain their viability and significantly reduce the cost of that process.

If we linked child benefit with school attendance, something that is within the Minister's competency, we would save approximately €100 million per annum and reduce the number of letters issued by the Department of Social Protection by over 600,000 every year, significantly reducing the administrative cost of operating the child benefit system and curbing fraud in that area, yet that is not happening.

If we look at the figures released last week on class sizes we see that class sizes are again failing some of our most vulnerable children in our schools. There are many more children in large class sizes today than was the case ten years ago. In my county of Roscommon, one in seven children, 1,000 children, are stuck in overcrowded classrooms of more than 30 pupils. In County Leitrim, the figure is one in five. It is the same in County Galway where one in five primary school pupils are stuck in class sizes of over 30.

If we are expecting today's primary school pupils to pay for the debt our generation created, the least we should do is ensure they have the ability to service that debt, and the way to do that is by providing them with a good foundation within the education system. The way we can ensure that our economy develops and becomes sustainable in the long term is if we have a plan to support our children instead of undermining their ability to maximise their capacity to service that debt by shoving them into classrooms of over 30 pupils. In fact, there are some classrooms with 40 pupils.

The Government is getting some things right. For example, the local employment offices' one-stop shops that has been set up is a very welcome development. It has cut out much of the bureaucracy we have seen in the past for people trying to set up a new business or expand their business. That is very positive. The SME tool to help people find out what they are eligible for and entitled to is also a positive development, but problems remain in that area. I will give the House a couple of examples.

A mechanic who is leaving the live register came to my clinic last week. He has been unemployed for the past four or five years. He is starting up his own garage. He has secured a number of contracts and he came in to find out about the supports that were available to him. There are supports available, and I outlined those to him, but like many people in that situation they were never very good at balancing the books in terms of finances and so forth.

His wife works four hours a week and is willing to do the books, but has no formal training in that regard. She approached the local training centre to see if she could get a basic course to teach her to do the accounts, send out invoices and have the returns ready for the accountant and the Revenue at the end of the year. She was told she could not do a course, because she is an adult dependant on her husband's jobseeker's allowance. He can do the course, but she cannot. He does not want to do the course. He does not have the time or, he believes, the skills to undertake it. There is someone in the household who could have another part-time job, but they are being told "No". Because she is not signing on the live register, she cannot do the course, even though it would make her husband's business more viable and sustainable and create more jobs into the future. That system is broken and it must be addressed.

I raised an issue at a committee meeting on social welfare recently regarding a young man in Boyle who was on a training course having been referred by the Department of Social Protection. There are 20 people on this adult education course and every week he must physically leave it, cross the road and sign on with social welfare to say he is still on the live register. Each one of those 20 people must go across the road to the local social welfare office to sign on. Surely, when they are on that particular course, it should be a recognition that they are available for work. They should not have to have their classes disrupted up to 20 times per week by people having to go across the road. It shows that there is not really a commitment to ongoing education and training if we are asking people to leave a course every week to sign on the live register.

I turn next to the issue that arises when someone gets into the workforce, creates a job for himself or herself and hopefully two or three more down the road before becoming sick. While employees get access to support from the Department of Social Protection through disability benefit, a self-employed person is not entitled to any benefit supports as their PRSI contributions do not so provide. The Tánaiste and the Government have been talking about changing the rules in that regard to ensure that a person who is self-employed who gets sick or is injured in the workplace has supports and a safety net. However, it is all talk. We have yet to see action. If we are serious about supporting entrepreneurs and about getting people with good ideas into the workforce, we must put in place that safety net.

I turn next to an issue surrounding local employment offices. My local employment office in most years has all of its allocation spent by the middle of the year and must wait six months before it can provide financial support to businesses that want to get up and running. That system is flawed and must be changed, particularly in counties and towns where there is not a large amount of foreign direct investment. Counties like Roscommon and towns like Ballinasloe should be given priority in relation to LEO funding. They should get additional funds at the start of the year to support job creation. When we know that getting multinational employers into those towns will be challenging, we should at least support the local people that want to create jobs and to start out in business. Why is it that LEOs in counties like Roscommon and Galway are critically short-staffed? If they had the staff, they could provide the advice and assistance to local businesses trying to expand and local people trying to set up companies. That can be of huge assistance to them. LEOs should not be trying to provide support in circumstances in which they do not have the staff allocation. They are trying to provide that support with not one but two hands tied behind their backs.

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