Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With the permission of the House I intend to share with Deputy Lahart.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Like my friend on the opposite benches, I agree that it is unfortunate the debate is taking place at such a late hour. Nonetheless, it is a great opportunity for all of us to have our input and our say in what can only be described as a departure in terms of the way budgets are framed.

I met an experienced journalist this evening at an event. He used to frequent this House. He wondered how we were managing in the new environment. He reflected on the question and said that much of the excitement and buzz had gone out of the budget. That is good. It is a recognition of a maturity developing around this House whereby on this occasion each Member, if he or she wishes, has an opportunity to contribute to the framing of the budget. Now, there are some who chose not to participate at all for party political reasons. They could have signalled their intent to be part of a new dispensation or framework that recognises how minority administrations work in a way that is not to the exclusion of the voices of those elected with such a valuable mandate. However, for naked political reasons these people chose to go into hiding during the course of government formation talks. Effectively they went into exile for that period. There may be some political advantage to that, although I am unsure. I believe it was a betrayal of the people who voted in the election.

I am pleased that the party I represent had the maturity and capacity to work with the Government, made up of Fine Gael and a number of Independents. We have tried insofar as we can to change the course of economic and social policy at a macro level. We are regularly asked about the Fianna Fáil achievement and what the Independents have achieved. I believe we should consider it in a larger sense. We need to look on it at a macro level. We campaigned on a particular platform during the course of the election earlier this year. Much of our emphasis was on investment in public services and overhead reduction in taxation. I am not being critical. This was simply the way the campaign was fought. Those in Fine Gael had a view that the universal social charge should be abolished. In fairness, they recognised that this was not perhaps what the electorate wanted. They have recognised how the electorate has spoken in terms of the support they have given to my party and others. As a result, they engaged in a process that sees us now with something greater than a 2:1 split between investment and tax modification from the €1 billion or €1.2 billion available.

Perhaps there is some argument about where the extra €200 million came about in the latter hours of negotiations but that is water under the bridge now. The fact is that now significant moneys are available to allow Deputies on all sides to make their case for investment in the social, physical, health and capital infrastructure of the State. Furthermore, Deputies can make a case in respect of what to do from a tax or universal social charge reduction point of view. Such proposals were targeted principally at the lower income cohort of the population. To me that is the Fianna Fáil stamp. This stamp or push probably emerged when we achieved considerable support from the electorate last February. That is important.

Whether it was a Pauline conversion on the part of those in Fine Gael or a recognition that an election is not in their interests or in anyone's interests in the short term - it is certainly not in the interests of the country - is irrelevant. The fact is that all Ministers have ended up in a better position because there is a greater capacity now in light of the moneys available to deal with the constraints. I note the Minister and Minister of State present in the House have ambitious targets in their areas. These are areas where there has been a considerable dearth of investment in recent years. Hopefully, the budget will allow them to move ahead with the ambitious projects they have in mind.

The budget is in many ways an opportunity for a government to set out its priorities. Sometimes it is not always possible to secure the desired funding from the Department of Finance to meet a Minister's needs, but the process does give Ministers an opportunity to set out their priorities. I have responsibility as Opposition spokesperson on communications, climate action and environment. I am somewhat disappointed that the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Denis Naughten, has not made more of the opportunity - I recognise the constraints in finance - around the budget to set out his priorities rather than focus on his attachment to spin, which is something to which he has become accustomed.

I was taken by the Minister's recent announcement. One of the first statements he made when he came to office was to the effect that he would not take up the option of introducing a broadcasting charge. That was an option I was ready to support because it was part of our manifesto. As a strong advocate of public service broadcasting I took the view that there was an opportunity to increase the moneys available to support the national broadcaster. I believe that is the right thing to do. I also took the view that there was an opportunity to make available increased moneys in support of an element of public service remit within local radio stations. That has been lobbied for by the independent sector. I was taken by something I read in recent days.

See this speech in context