Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am also delighted to have some time today to speak on this summer economic statement. It used to be said at one time that one swallow never a summer made. I will not call them swallows but two Ministers addressed Members with speeches on this issue today. I would not dare call them that and I wish them both well in their new portfolios but it is a case of tús maith leath na hoibre. As Members are aware, there is much work to be done.

As a participant in the talks on the programme for Government, I understand a small part of the background to the current economic position, as well as the aspirations within the programme for Government regarding the economic outlook, employment, jobs and the general economic well-being of people. A responsibility is placed on all elected Members to deal with many and varied issues and with people's lives from the cradle to the grave or as far as I am concerned, from even before the cradle to the grave. It is important that Members have well-being uppermost in their minds. Since the economic crash of the banking crisis ravaged the country, as well as the building boom and the madness around that time, we have been picking up the pieces and trying to deal with it. It has rendered much hardship in people's lives and there has been much emigration and huge challenges. When one sees an organisation such as Barnardos issuing a statement today to the effect that thousands of children are suffering from poverty in Ireland, it is not a nice backdrop against which to launch the summer economic statement. It is vital that Members be prudent, that real and tangible reform take place and that there be real checks and balances to avoid ever revisiting a situation like that.

As someone who voted for the bank guarantee - I have made this point a number of times in this Chamber previously - I regretted it from the time I did so. I will regret it for the rest of my life because I believe we were led a merry dance by the bankers. We did not have the proper information and while I will not use the word one is not allowed to use in the Chamber, we were told a lot of porkies and a lot of misinformation was around. Given events that have transpired subsequently, one now can see that many things that happened or were happening were under way long before Members entered this House on that fateful night to rescue the banks and were led a merry dance for which we are paying the price. Members must ensure that nothing like that ever besets the economy again and that Members of this House never again are given the choice they had that night. They faced the threat that the morning after there would be no money in the money machines or the holes in the wall or money to pay the wages of the public service, civil servants and so on. It was not a nice choice.

As I stated, there is a new budget process with budget reform and a budget committee. The Economic Management Council has been stood down, that is, the four Ministers in the previous Government who made all the decisions. As I understand it, even the Cabinet did not have a say; it was only the mighty four, as the fellow said. Had there been seven of them, one might call them the magnificent seven but I cannot call them that. I suppose another acronym will be found for them before Members finish. I wish the new Ministers and the new committees well, as well as the Chairs of the committees. The budgetary process will start much earlier and hopefully the days are gone when Members would come into the Chamber and sit down. I myself was a backbencher of a Government party and we used to just praise the Minister and applaud him when he finished reading out a statement into which we were waiting to dig afterwards to try to find out the bits and pieces that would be the sting in the tail. I believe it now will be up to all members of the different committees - but in particular the Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach - to have their input and to have a better understanding. All Members will have a better understanding by sitting in, joining in, by being involved in and by engaging in that process.

As for what Members have been told about the economic outlook, as anyone who lives in rural Ireland is aware, it has not jumped in leaps and bounds and has not taken massive steps. If there is a recovery, it is a fledgling one and trying to find an economic recovery in rural Ireland is like looking for the corncrakes, which are very scarce these days. Gone are the days when the corncrakes were in the meadows. I have heard the cuckoo this year several times but lamentably, the corncrakes are long gone and the recovery is as scarce as that.

It is as scarce as hen's teeth in many sizeable towns and regions, not to mention villages and communities. It is very serious.

It is very serious to see numerous tower cranes now in Dublin. We know what happened before. They were boasting that there were more cranes here than there were in London. We know what happens and we cannot allow that to happen again. I have certain fears that it will overheat in the capital again. Members present know that trying to get accommodation when we are here during the week is now nigh on impossible. That is a good thing in a way, but it is a very bad thing as well because we need balance in the regions.

The Minister with responsibility for regional development and rural affairs will have a big role to play. Not only the Minister with responsibility for rural affairs, Deputy Heather Humphreys, but every Minister in Cabinet will have to rural-proof and poverty-proof all legislation. The problem I have seen with legislation since I came into the House is that is it drafted by the drafters. I mean no ill will to them. They can mean well. However, by the time it is debated, put through Committee Stage, sent back and forward and made into legislation, it can become draconian. That can have a severe impact. Each and every sentence in any legislative procedure we pass in the House should be rural-proofed and poverty-proofed to judge its impact. There should be an assessment of the economic and social impact that those measures may have on the people we represent, our families and our communities. That is vital and I hope it happens.

As the Taoiseach said to us on numerous occasions during the talks on the programme for Government, the political landscape has changed utterly and will never again be the same. I believe he was right. He gave a commitment to meet with us for several days. The Ministers were there. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, was certainly there. The Taoiseach said there was going to have to be a seismic and full change in the public service and the civil service to reflect the new situation. I worry if that is coming and if it is there. Are we ready and is our public service up to it? I am not bashing them. Since the foundation of the State we have had some very distinguished civil servants, and many or all go in to do a good job. However, I have found over the years that they are the permanent government. It is very hard sometimes to get them to change their ways. Ministers might want to do something but are not able to do so because the civil servants that are there will be there when the Ministers are gone and were there before they came in. We need a seismic change and must bring them with us on this journey for better governance, better social-proofing, economic-proofing and rural-proofing and a better understanding of how a life works and evolves. I am not saying that they are in an ivory tower. They are not. However, the system has become very cumbersome. Speaking for the self-employed, which I am myself, I must say it has become very cumbersome. There is so much legislation. Some of it was badly needed, but more of it is overarching, doubling up and criss-crossing. One piece of legislation sometimes directly contradicts the other. It is very hard now for a young man, woman or entrepreneur - whom we are encouraging - who has an idea and the energy, the passion, the enthusiasm, the foresight, the vision and all of the ingredients that are needed to stimulate our fledgling recovering economy to get on the road. While we have agencies out there trying to help them, many is the time the agencies do not come from the same breed and do not have the same passion and understanding.

While there are support agencies, the banks are closed for business. Do not mind even talking about them. They messed us over, tricked us and are not open for business, full stop. They are not supporting any business people at the moment. They are not supporting families, communities or any business initiatives. People can see that in the housing crisis. They are out to get property values up and out to get as much as they can. They have sold on many loans very unfairly - though obviously legally, because we have no proper legislation to deal with them - to vulture funds. They are not supporting any of the entrepreneurs that we need nor the businesses whose fingernails are worn from holding on since the onset of the recession in 2007. As we found out last night when discussing the social welfare Bill, if self-employed people default, crash or cease to trade, they have the Revenue Commissioners and everybody else to deal with. Their workers get social welfare supports, and rightly so. However, the businessman himself, the self-employed person, gets diddly squat. Zilch. That is unfair. Many of them are in very precarious positions and their families have to be educated, fed and clothed as well. Therefore, it is very important that we deal with that and try to support those people. There must be a better understanding from the system as to how these entrepreneurs think, what drives them, what makes them tick, and what hours they put in to make a reasonably successful business. We are not talking about multi-millionaires, though some of them will come on and grow into huge businesses.

The labour market has been mentioned in the debate. We are told we have a young, active and well trained market. However, we are finding that some of bigger foreign direct investment companies are telling us they are not seeing the kind of qualified people they want to see coming out of our universities. They did not say that today or yesterday. They have been telling me that in my region for ten or 12 years. We are too slow to adapt. We need to listen to messages like these, because FDI is huge in my county and region. We have some great long-standing FDI companies. It is tremendous work. We heard it at a conference in Galway about five years ago when we were told clearly that the labour market was not fit for purpose. The education system was not turning out the right kind of people. It was not that they were not smart, clever, able or capable; it was that they were not being trained in the proper direction. We need to look at that seriously. We need to look at the impasse in some of these universities. They are too colonial and they think about their own area. We see that at the moment with the Minister with responsibility for housing, Deputy Simon Coveney, who is looking at building accommodation. We dare not touch the universities or go near them. They are like fiefdoms that we cannot enter. We must get rid of that. Public service must serve the people and their needs from the cradle to the grave. We need to look at that quite seriously.

The dreaded words that came up during the election and some time before it were "the fiscal space". My goodness. We saw last night that thankfully the goalie on the opposing team had not the fiscal space, or the physical space, to stop the ball going in. We are all celebrating today and last night. That is a good thing and I salute it. Sport gives us all a lift. It is very important that the flag of the green, white and gold is out there. Two teams from Ireland are now into the last 16. I am not a big soccer enthusiast but I wish them well and I hope they do well. There is a spin-off of the feel-good factor from that for everyone as well. Whoever came up with this fiscal space, we know after the election what the people thought of it. We are told that in 2017 the Government might have a billion euro to spare and over four years it might have €4 billion extra. That is all predicated on the recovery and on the status quo. Hopefully, on the matter of a Brexit, the people voting today in torrential rain will vote to stay. The impact of the UK not staying has not been properly evaluated by us at all as a peripheral economy and island country that does so much business with its neighbour. Those figures are predicated on that. It is very slow progress.

On the agricultural situation,I am old enough to remember three or four deep and dark recessions. Each time, the farming and agricultural sector played a huge part in dragging us out of those recessions. This time, it has done so again. The sector had done reasonably in the previous two years, but this year it is on the floor. I have farmers coming in to me looking for farm assist payments. I am sure Deputy Scanlon and every other Member has the same. They are in abject poverty. They are not people who ever put their hands out to beg. They are always people who give and support. They are proud people who love the land and the produce and love to be productive, engaging and supportive of society in general. There is a deep crisis looming in farming with the price of milk in particular. The co-operative movements were set up by the late T. J. Maher, my own dad and others in the spirit of community and the little village of Kickhams, Mullinahone and all that. The ideas they had were very noble and brought it a long way. However, greed got in the way. There are huge conglomerates now. While they do good work, the likes of Kerry Group and Glanbia are too controlling. I have small wholesalers and business people who are supporting farmers whose milk is going to those co-ops. Yet they cannot get a penny in payment, cannot feed their animals and can hardly feed themselves.

That is not good enough. They have a set price, all kinds of schemes and millions in profit. Many of them went on adventures overseas but many of those went askew. Sometimes obscene wages are paid to the chief executives and others while the people who put them there are forgotten. If we forget about the source, we will not nurture the seeds. Those seeds are our rich agricultural land for sheep, cattle, corn, cereals, potatoes, fruit and so forth. If we do not support the farmers and the growers, there will be little point in talking about the PLCs because they will not be there. We have flagship industries but they must now turn back, bring the flag down to half mast for a while and look after the people on the ground. Those people must be supported. They are crying out for support but it is not being given. I have never seen the like. I work in that area. I must declare an interest in a business that supplies diesel to farmers. The farmers do not have money. They usually are very good at paying their way and their bills but they are in a deep financial crisis. It is not easy in that sector.

On the fiscal space and what we will do with it, there must be better value and accountability for our spending. We must get better value for every euro we spend. It is also important that we evaluate it. There should be not only spring, summer, autumn and winter economic statements but also proper debates such as this one and debates in committees on the economy, where it is going and the value for money being achieved. There is a great deal of waste across several Departments. One can see that in the HSE and in the crisis in accident and emergency departments, even in my home county. It is awful and makes me sad. I am called regularly to the accident and emergency department in my home town and I see the mayhem there. We see on television what happens in war-stricken countries but it is not far behind what is happening in some of the accident and emergency departments. The front-line staff are under pressure.

Again, there is too much management in the HSE system but not enough front-line people. It is smothered with managers. When the matron ran a hospital, it was run properly. Now, there is every type of manager one can think of, with people walking around with clip charts. There are floor managers, ward managers, bed managers, linen managers, perhaps mattress managers and catering managers but there is no management. Then the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, visits and issues damning reports of unclean and unsafe practices, despite all of the managers. We must root that out and have accountability. The HSE should have been stood down, as was promised to me by two previous taoisigh, former Deputies Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen. There were also commitments, or at least rumblings, about it from the Government but the HSE is still there. Staggeringly enough, the HSE has more officials employed now, and I am not referring to nurses or doctors, than it had in 2007, despite the recession. It beggars belief.

I wish the Minister, Deputy Harris, who is young, intelligent, capable and a man of vision, well in his office as well as his four Ministers of State. We must serve the public patients and not close down wonderful old institutions, such as St. Luke's Psychiatric Hospital in my home town. That has been turned into offices and the offices in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, which I visited during the talks on forming a Government, do not have carpet, paintings or seating that are as good or as plush. That is not necessary. Money must be invested in our hospitals. We saw the fiasco with the new children's hospital and how it has taken so long. We must examine every shilling of our spend.

There are huge costs in the justice area. This was raised this morning by Deputy Michael McGrath. There are savage costs for young drivers. I have a young girl who passed her driving test last Thursday night. To pass a driving test a person must take 12 lessons, and rightly so. People must pass the theory test and the driving test but before they can get out on the road, they are penalised. They are being made criminals before they start. They should certainly be penalised if they have accidents or are reckless but why should they and their parents be penalised otherwise? The parents cannot afford to drive them to work but if they buy a car for the young person, the insurance will cost more than the car. The cost of insurance is a racket. I described the insurance companies previously as terrorists and I was challenged about it but they are because they are creating terror for families and businesses who cannot afford the insurance. That is what terrorists do - they hold people hostage for ransom. One cannot manage without insurance.

A man stopped me in the street in Tipperary town last Monday week. He has been driving for 60 years. His insurance last year cost €400 but this year it is nearly €1,200. He was given no explanation. He also has a no claims bonus. We must stop that. We have a consumer protection agency and a plethora of other agencies and regulators but they are not doing their business. They should be disbanded because they are not fit for purpose and they are not regulating.

Some speakers have mentioned the labour market. The labour market has been ill-treated. I have been an employer since 1983 or 1984 and I have tried my best, within the legislation, to have a good relationship with my employees, which I believe I have always had. Many of them have come and gone, progressed to other jobs, returned to me and so forth and tried to better themselves. However, the way big companies are treating their staff now is inhuman. It is not good enough. Clonmel experienced this a couple of months ago. Suir Pharma Ireland has been in Clonmel for nearly 40 years and it was taken over 15 months ago. Obviously, the competition authority was not consulted or was not watching. Suddenly, it was gone. Workers had come to me about it eight or ten days beforehand and I tried to contact the company but could not. They were called in on the Tuesday and they thought it was good news but they were given their P45s on the Thursday morning. There was no explanation. That is no way to treat staff. They were left to the machinery of the State.

I thank Joe McGrath, the county manager, South Tipperary County Council, all the other agencies, including the Department of Social Protection, and the Tipperary Institute who arranged an evening in the Clonmel Park Hotel to provide the workers with somewhere to go where they could talk to somebody and find out what opportunities they had. One gentleman had worked there for 37 years. Where will he go? It is not good enough that companies can come here and buy such good, long-standing businesses. It was an indigenous business in Clonmel. It started up there as a little acorn and grew to a big oak tree but now it is plundered and gone. There is no organisation watching out for that. We saw it happen with Clerys and elsewhere.

There are also the low-paid jobs, which are now in the public service. The unions must take responsibility too. Their representatives meet us in the House and elsewhere to discuss the yellow pack wages. However, they negotiated them and they had no problem pulling up the ladder when they got to the top. They must take some responsibility. It is a shame to expect a young Garda recruit to be paid €23,000 a year when one considers the cost of rent if they are posted to Dublin or any busy town. It is unacceptable. How can we expect them to respect the uniform and serve the public? There are so many who apply to the Garda and are willing to go through the rigorous application and training process. We must support them with a decent wage. The same applies to teachers. There is discrimination in the school staff room with some teachers on one wage and new teachers on a different wage. The unions must take a certain amount of responsibility for that as well. They bought into it and accepted it, although they are wringing their hands about it now. The Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest, FEMPI, Acts also must be addressed. It is very serious.

As I mentioned last night, there are many activation schemes. They are necessary. I am a passionate believer in the community employment, CE, schemes, - I have been involved in one since 1988 in my constituency - the Tús scheme and the rural social scheme, which is a lifeline for farmers. They want to go to work and enhance their community, be it by cleaning rivers, involvement in the Tidy Towns competition or otherwise. Those schemes are important but they have become restrictive. One only gets a year on them. The CE schemes have also become restrictive. When good people reach 55 years of age, they are turfed out. At one time, 15% of them were kept on the schemes and one did one's best when choosing which people should be retained. It is not a very nice job for volunteer sponsors. They are volunteer employers and volunteer boards. We will see what will be exposed tonight about a charity. It is awful. Throughout this country volunteers, who are ordinary working people with little expertise but with commonsense, are running those schemes. However, they are becoming too restrictive, so we must examine that.

On the other hand, a new programme has been set up for job activation called JobPath. It is in my constituency. A gentleman from a family I know - he and his wife have worked all of their lives - has contacted me a number of times in the past 15 months trying to get a job. He cannot get CE or any meaningful employment. He is being forced into JobPath now and must do training, which he has already done several times. If he does not do it he has been told he will be knocked off jobseeker's allowance. That is unacceptable. I support the establishment of programmes such as JobPath but they cannot bully people into doing training which they have already completed. That is farcical. It must be examined and I will talk to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, about it because that is not respectful of any man.

This man is quite intelligent and is a capable and able worker. He worked in all kinds of jobs and wanted to work; he cannot be treated like that.

Whatever we do, we need more investment when it comes to carers and a social conscience because, as was pointed out here last night, they are probably working for €2 per hour in some cases if one was to count it. They do not do it for money. They do it for love of their loved ones and next-of-kin. We should have an audit of the value they provide. They keep hospital beds free and people in their homes where they thrive and recover better and where they want to be. They should not be described as a resource because they are all human beings and good people who need to be supported, not squeezed.

Legislation is too restrictive. It has become restrictive over the past number of years for young people getting into the job market. I am sure the Ceann Comhairle will not mind my comparing us in terms of age. When we were young, we all tilled sugar beet. We could work with farmers when we were 12 or 13 years of age. It was the best training we ever got. Now a young person cannot work until he or she is 16 years of age, or possibly 18 years of age in some jobs, and they get no training. The former Tánaiste was berated here some time ago for talking about people sitting at home looking at computers but that is what they are doing. They are better off doing meaningful work outside, getting the grá for work and an understanding of how hard it is for their mothers and fathers to put food on the table, put them through education, give them clothes and have a reasonable standard of living. They can get experience and know the value of a euro rather than not being allowed to do it because of labour laws saying that they cannot do this or that. Even in family businesses there are huge restrictions on age and the hours a young person can work. Hard work never killed anyone. The ethos of work must be instilled in people from a very young age and we must have work over welfare, but it must be rewarding for people to go to work as well. We can have measures like family income supplement but we must have a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

I think the National Employment Rights Authority, NERA, is still hovering around somewhere. NERA was set up in a blaze of glory with regional headquarters in Carlow and five regional offices with a plethora of people. I appealed to the Taoiseach at one time to put them out in support of employers. I am all for workers' rights but they were too zealous. I do not know where they are now but we can be sure they are all still in position. This is the problem. These agencies or quangos are never stood down. They are like noxious weeds. You need to spray them twice a year to keep them back. I mean the quangos, not the people. Quangoland took hold here. They must have given it 10-10-20 or nitrogen because it really took off. If any farmer could grow crops as quick as the quangos grew here, they would have been very successful indeed. We need to examine that as well because they are putting people off the road and out of business with all their visits instead of asking how they can help them. I have to include the Revenue Commissioners in this bracket as well because it needs to understand how difficult it is for people to keep their doors open. I am not saying anybody should evade tax, but they should be supported and Revenue should be more supportive and understanding. We see people named every so often and you find that half or maybe two-thirds of the money they have paid consists of fees and interest. That is obscene.

The role of the sheriff and how they threaten businesses, and how lucrative this area has become, with unregulated henchmen, must be investigated. It is a third force with people in balaclavas going around threatening people. We got rid of the Black and Tans but they are back. They are not Black and Tans but they are brown tans and they are as bad as the Black and Tans because they are terrorising people. We need balance and we need to rein in these quangos and the sheriff and have respect for employers, employees and all of our people from the cradle to the grave - and before the cradle, in light of the legislation I see coming forward next week. We need to be mindful of that as well. There is another Bill before the House this evening that seeks to ban hare coursing. That is an industry as well. We are going to have all these pieces of legislation that will ban all these things, yet we talk about how we want jobs. That activity is worth a fortune to our county. The national coursing finals bring in €6 million every year and small farmers and ordinary people have greyhounds. Everybody with a greyhound has to have a trainer and meet veterinary bills. It is an industry in itself, and we cannot just decide that this is-----

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