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

We support the increase in all payments and, as we said repeatedly in discussions with Ministers, their decision to delay starting dates is bad policy. We regret that the Government has chosen to delay implementation of certain commitments on education.  The emptiness of the so-called action plan on education is reflected in the fact that the budget does not fund any initiative contained within it. It is not a strong budget for the education sector. The confidence and supply agreement requires a reduction in class sizes and we will insist on this being addressed. The decision to end all ring-fenced provision for guidance and counselling services was incredibly damaging and regressive and its impact on disadvantaged communities, in particular, has been terrible.

We expect the reversal of this to be fully implemented next year. A start has been made in this budget but it has to be ex-quota according to the confidence and supply agreement. There is resistance to this within the Department of Education and Skills and among some groups in education as some want to have the full deployment for themselves. If we are serious about the mental health of young people, professional ex-quota guidance counselling provision should be restored to young students in second level schools. If they could get good, solid guidance and advice, free of any stigma, it would nip any problems in the bud. Its removal was a shocking and cynical decision taken to camouflage a reduction in the second level pupil-teacher ratio, to please the unions and avoid a political outcry.

The ending of postgraduate grants was a targeted attack on the ability of many to gain critical qualifications.  The restarting of these grants, for which we have fought, begins the unwinding of a callous and unnecessary cut. It was also strategically stupid to cut postgraduate grants and to eliminate them. If we are serious about investment in the future of our country, fourth level education is essential. It is worrying that so many young people from average income families have decided not to pursue masters degrees or PhDs because of the chronic underfunding of the sector and their inability to afford it.

We identified the crisis in third-level funding as approaching emergency levels and the €31 million announced yesterday, while it may stabilise the situation, is nowhere near enough.  What is now needed is a strategy for investment in a sector whose success is central to our economic and social future. If one had to pick one area where the absence of strategic direction was clearest in yesterday's budget, it would be a proper and realistic response to the Cassells report. It was a comprehensive report, put together at the last Government's instigation, to look at third level education. All the options involve increases in State subvention, amounting to €121 million per annum, but the €30 million in yesterday's budget goes nowhere near that.

Nothing has been done in respect of the national training fund and there have been no moves to allocate any of it to third level education. The issue has been kicked down the road into the Oireachtas committee. It is a cop-out to say we have to go into all the options, particularly option 4 on student loans. We can go through that detail later and there is no reason why the Government cannot respond now. It should have responded yesterday and should do so in the next budget by significantly increasing the amount of money going to third level education. The graphs are extremely worrying and show a downward spiral over the past number of years in terms of the world rankings of our universities and the fact that some institutes of technology are almost insolvent. The student-lecturer ratios are at an appalling level in some cases across the sector and this requires a realistic response from Government. It goes to the heart of the lack of strategic direction of which I spoke, because skills are key to growth and economic development into the future, as well as to attracting foreign direct investment and facilitating Irish-owned companies to grow and develop with suitably qualified personnel.

The small provisions for research from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation implement already announced policy. They will not stop the loss of important scientific policy as we double down on an approach which narrows our research base, which in turn will continue to damage our long-term prospects. This Government's approach to science has been roundly condemned by a range of independent voices and nothing is to change. The loss of hundreds of researchers and the exclusion of most basic research from funding is causing real damage and is set to continue. I refer the Taoiseach to an editorial in the Financial Timeslast week on the Nobel laureate for science and research. The fundamental point was that if one does not invest in basic, pure, blue-sky research the capacity of society to respond to the big issues of the day, with new products, solutions and thinking, is undermined over the longer term. The policy of this Government, and that of the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Richard Bruton, while he was in charge of enterprise, is damaging to the research community and I do not know how many more articles we have to read, or how much more articulation of this core deficit in our research policy we have to listen to, before the Government sits up and takes notice of its lack of coherence in this area. Research is a key strategic imperative for future economic growth and competitiveness.

While overall levels of employment will remain high, we are extremely concerned that there is no sign of any engagement with the casualisation of employment and unfair contracts. The budget contained no provision to address this major problem. No area sums up the failure of Fine Gael to develop and implement new strategies more than health.  The inheritance of the Reilly-Varadkar years has been deeply destructive, including the attempt to influence a massively wasteful and failed new funding model. In the last two years, waiting lists have increased by 56% and pressures within the system are mounting by the day, though the then Minister, Deputy Varadkar, has denied this for the past two years, as has the Taoiseach.

The scrapping of the National Treatment Purchase Fund caused enormous harm.  Its re-establishment is a first step, but nowhere near enough.  The most important thing about the NTPF is the spirit in which it works, whereby it helps use the full capacity of the national system to provide badly needed operations for people. It is not just about providing money - there was a whole system in which waiting lists and waiting times were analysed forensically, creating a competitive approach to getting surgeries completed. It did work and it did reduce waiting times for operations down to six months for adults and three for children, in some cases exceeding that. I can never understand why the then Minister, Senator James Reilly, got rid of it by rendering it impotent.

As has been exposed by a number of journalists, the presentation of health budgets in recent years has been borderline fraudulent, due to the behaviour of Government.  Service plans have been published without the relevant funding.  The mental health budget has been deliberately overstated and manipulated at budget time. This was only exposed through freedom of information and has yet to be acknowledged by Government. Before we can judge this budget we have to see the relevant service plans and check if the manipulations of the past have been repeated. We have been pushing for urgent action on child care for a number of years and welcome, in principle, the extension of a universal scheme.  However, the lack of operational details or a strategy to ensure adequate supply means we have to wait and see before going any further. We are concerned at the steep cut-off in income limits which offers a significant trap for middle-income earners.  While this appears to have been enough to satisfy some Government backbenchers it has not addressed the core problem facing the squeezed. In fact it may, in certain circumstances, increase affordability problems for them. We will be seeking an early committee review of the proposal and call on the Minister to immediately publish all background work carried out in deciding the levels and thresholds to be implemented.

The housing emergency developed in recent years because of a lack of delivery, not because of a lack of funding.  No matter what targets were set they were always missed.  Even though Fine Gael and the Labour Party put their most aggressive Ministers into the Department, they presided over an emergency which now includes every type of housing, from rental to ownership. While the then Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, was busy propagandising and giving interviews, he ensured that in 2015 the number of local authority new-builds was the lowest ever recorded. We believe that the package announced yesterday risks further unbalancing the sector. Local authorities have not been given the staff or expertise required to deliver the 1,750 homes provided for. Some initiatives will simply drive prices higher and the plight of thousands faced with extortionate variable rate mortgage interest rates is ignored.

The 35% cut in capital support for the Irish language and the Gaeltacht is a sad reflection on a Government which seems intent on wasting the historic opportunity of the rising interest in our native language. Tá díomá an domhain orainn nach bhfuil go leor airgid ann chun Straitéis 20 Bliain don Ghaeilge a chur chun cinn i mbliana. Tá sé riachtanach ar an Taoiseach agus an Rialtas athrú a dhéanamh ar an scéal sin. During the election we successfully argued that rural Ireland was being devastated by the loss of services and lack of any concrete plans for the future.

The renaming of a Department to include the word "Rural" in its title means nothing in the absence of a coherent strategy. Funding which amounts to no more than €500,000 per county is no statement of intent. There also remains no sign of any credible transport or infrastructure strategy, which are matters within the remit of the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross. The core issue with this Government is its drift. It appears mainly concerned with internal manoeuvrings within Fine Gael, with, seemingly, no interest in trying to set a strategic direction for our economy or our public services. During the past week or so, we have picked up on the fact that there is clearly something going on internally within Government which is making it difficult for people looking in to decode policy positions and so on. The only thing stopping Ministers is their own commitment. They do not need a majority in this House to tell us what they want to do in terms of the future of the areas they oversee.

The regressive damage of Fine Gael has been stopped by this budget but many opportunities are being missed and threats remain unaddressed. This budget is a partial departure from the damage of the last five years. It must be the last we see of budgets that are devoid of urgency or strategic ambition.

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