Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Government seems to specialise in big and bold, but deceptive, headline announcements when it comes to spending. The latest example of this is the big, bold headline of €27 billion to be spent between now and 2021. Of course, why not have a 20-year plan with an even larger figure, or a 30-year or 50-year plan involving hundreds of billions of euro? It is completely deceptive because it does not tell us how it compares with capital investment when the level of capital investment was at a reasonable level prior to the crash, after which it collapsed. If one makes that comparison, one finds we still are nowhere near the level of public capital investment we had when there was a relatively reasonable public investment plan. Even then it was insufficient, to my mind.

At its height, there was public investment of about €9 billion a year. Broken down on a year-by-year basis, the Government's proposal is a fraction of that. As we know, there was chronic under-investment in water infrastructure and social housing, even at the height of the boom when we had lots of money. I could refer to many other areas, such as the chronic under-investment in public transport, even when the money was available to us.

I have mentioned forestry in the House many times. It is pathetic that the State forestry company cannot engage in afforestation even though we know the economic, social and cultural benefits that would derive from a serious public investment programme in forestry. None of that happened, even when we were spending twice or three times what has been proposed in this plan.

If one rolls up the figures of public investment over a long period of time, as this announcement does, it sounds great. However, when one breaks it down, one finds it is pathetic. It is well below the levels of public investment we had previously and, quite worryingly, it suggests that even by 2021 we will not have overcome the massive deficit that we now have in public capital investment arising from the crash and the austerity that has been imposed. We will still be well below the levels of public investment that we had prior to the crash, which is a very depressing picture of capital investment plans.

I will not discuss all of these areas; rather, I will discuss one in particular in the short time available, namely, housing. We have the rehash of announcements that have been made, whereby the figure of €3 billion has been extended by one year to add a few extra hundred million to it. The vast bulk of this is not real capital spending at all, because about 75% to 80% of the €3 billion support for the housing strategy will go to private landlords under the HAP scheme, which will not deliver. That is not just a prediction, because it has not delivered this year. The delivery promised was 8,400 new units under the HAP scheme, but I understand less than half that number have been delivered. I am not absolutely clear on the figures for the end of the year, but they are not anywhere near what we were promised. We know the figures will not be delivered because landlords are running away from arrangements with local authorities and have no intention of providing social housing when they can charge astronomical levels of rent in the private market. Why the hell would they? The plan is completely flawed and deceptive in the case of housing because it is not real public investment in building council housing, which would actually provide us with housing stock to deal with the housing crisis. It is a guaranteed recipe that the housing crisis will continue to get worse, notwithstanding big, bold announcements and large-sounding figures. The plan completely fails to deal with this emergency situation. If it cannot deal with an emergency, how can we give any credibility to the rest of the plan as actually delivering anything serious in terms of the massive injection of public capital investment we need to get the economy back on the rails?

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